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by implements 860 days ago
> Most likely Snapchat's E2EE is just a facade, they probably have a dictionary of "funny" words on the device (and/or the server) and automatically flags the message in the internal systems when certain stopwords are being used.

On device content scanning notifies Snapchat of a certain type of threat, that + metadata goes to a real-time law-enforcement system which combines it with other sources to decide whether a lawful intercept is warranted - if so, Snapchat pulls the cached messages off the device and forwards them on.

It’s arguable that would be reasonable and legal, depending on the watchlist.

1 comments

On device scanning would be reasonable? What happened when everybody was up in arms about Apple wanting to do on device scanning for child porn?
Well - it’s reasonable for a government to seek to stop absolute privacy subverting the prevention and detection of crime … I think, so a state has to find some way to be able to construct reasonable suspicion and then lawful search on routine internet activity. (Opinions vary, obviously)