Your High School Wants You To Install Snapchat

Bennett Haselton writes: They would never admit it, but your high school admins would probably breathe a sigh of relief if all of their sexting-mad students would go ahead and install Snapchat so that evidence of (sometimes) illegal sexting would disappear into the ether. They can't recommend that you do this, because it would sound like an implicit endorsement, just like they can't recommend designated drivers for teen drinking parties -- but it's a good bet they would be grateful. Read on for the rest.

Five teenagers at Warren Township High School in Gurnee, Illinois were arrested in November in conjunction with a girl's topless photo being distributed throughout the school. Last Thursday, in Rochester Hills, Michigan, a prosecutor announced that contemplating filing child pornography charges against "dozens" of students for distributing explicit pictures to other students at Rochester Adams High School. In Portland, Oregon, police are investigating a group of Grant High School students for making videos of each other having sex at the school and off campus. (And, of course, these are just the incidents that police found out about.) Naturally, schools everywhere have been falling over themselves to institute strict anti-cyber-bullying and anti-sexting policies (not to mention that sending and forwarding sexually explicit pictures of children under 18 is a federal crime as well).

Schools have rules for reasons that are a mixture of cynical protection against lawsuits and sincere concern for the students. When education system teach students not to smoke cigarettes, they're presumably doing that out of genuine concern for students' welfare, since it would be hard to sue the school for not teaching about the dangers of smoking. When a school installs a railing by the side of a walkway to keep students safe from passing cars, they're probably motivated by a mixture of concern over being sued, and legitimate concern for students' safety. When the school installs software on their computers to block Facebook and Reddit (even outside of class time, when computers are sitting idle and students have nothing else to do), they're probably motivated entirely by liability concerns - because they know virtually all of those students can get on those websites at home, so they're not affecting the students' long-term welfare by keeping them off of those websites, but they just don't want to be liable for anything if the students access those sites at school.

In the case of anti-sexting policies, I'm not cynical enough to think that schools are motivated entirely by liability concerns. There are actual risks to sexting pictures of yourself, even if you're never charged with violating child pornography laws: the embarrassment of your picture being forwarded around the school, or ending up in the archive of a porn site. On the other hand, worse things happen to dozens of high school students every month, but only a handful of schools get dragged into the national spotlight as a result of a child porn investigation. So let's call it about 25% due to legitimate concern for students and 75% due to liability reasons and concern for adverse publicity.

But sexting students could vastly reduce schools' concerns about both issues, by sending pictures using an app like Snapchat, which automatically deletes photos after the recipient has viewed them -- in order to greatly reduce the chance of a picture being saved or forwarded after it's sent. Please note, I'm not saying the photos can't be saved anyway, or recovered by computer forensics. And take heed: I'm not saying you should do it either way! But if you greatly reduce the chances of an image being saved, you greatly reduce the chances of it leading to a scandal that engulfs the school, or leads to a federal child pornography charge.

Of course there are cases where teens were arrested for sending child pornography through Snapchat as well. But these high-profile stories don't address the relevant question, which is: Are you less likely to get arrested (or expelled, or humiliated) for sending these pictures if you do it through Snapchat, even if the likelihood doesn't drop to zero? Obviously, yes.

Now even someone with no phone-hacking knowledge can figure out that if they receive an image over Snapchat, they can "save" it by taking a photo of their screen with another phone or camera, and the sender won't know. (You can also take a normal screen shot with the phone, but that will notify the sender that you took a screen shot, unless you download a third-party app or try some other hack which may or may not even work by the time you read this.) However, this assumes that the trust relationship between the sender and the recipient is already broken at the time the message is being sent, if the recipient is saving the message without the knowledge or consent of the sender. Some of these sexts are presumably being sent in the context of a relationship in which some (sweet, naive, misguided) trust still exists, so that if the sender sends the message and the recipient doesn't use some sneaky workaround, the picture will get deleted on schedule. If trust only falls apart later, then the recipient won't have a copy of the image any more if it was sent by Snapchat, but they will if it was sent via text.

Actually, it may be possible for the recipient to recover a snapchat image after their smartphone Snapchat app has supposedly "deleted" it -- a company called Digital Forensics offers Snapchat image recovery as a service, but they charge $300-$500 per incident, and even they haven't figured out how to do it on an iPhone yet.

So, in terms of boolean logic, if you send an explicit photo via Snapchat, it might end up being saved permanently and forwarded if:
(
the recipient is already being dishonest with you (saving pics without your permission) at the time that you send the picture
AND
the recipient is smart enough to figure out how to save Snapchat pictures without notifying you -- not that hard, but eliminates some people
)
OR
(
you later go through a nasty breakup with the recipient and they're determined to humiliate you or get you in trouble with the law
AND
they don't mind the fact that they could also get in trouble with the law, for saving or forwarding the picture
AND
they're willing to spend $300 to recover the image
AND
they don't have an iPhone
)

Whereas if you send a photo via regular text, all it takes to get in trouble is either (a) the recipient going through a nasty breakup with you, that puts them in a vindictive frame of mind, while they still have a copy on their phone, or (b) the recipient's family member snooping through their messages.

Your high school would never tell you so out loud, but between Snapchat and texting, you can guess which they would prefer you to use.

Of course, this advice wouldn't have done much good for the Portland students who made and distributed their own sex videos, since creating the illegal permanent recording was their entire goal. Snapchat can help protect people from mild levels of stupid, but it's a barrier you can overcome if you aim high and truly believe in yourself.

Got something to say about privacy, technology, or other topics of interest? Long-form submissions are welcome.

Comments

ITS HIM

[Anonymous Coward]

BENNETT!

Re:ITS HIM

[aardvarkjoe]

As I remarked in the comments for his last story, If Slashdot would make Bennett an editor, then those who don't want to read his stuff could filter it out using existing tools. That improves the site for those who don't want to see it, and for those who do by reducing the amount of spam and trolls that flood the comment section for every "article" he writes.

I sent an e-mail to /. to ask them to do so, or comment on why they won't. They didn't bother to respond, which is disappointing, although not unexpected given how hostile the Slashdot staff is towards their users.

So, I made the following user script to remove posts that mention "Bennett Haselton": https://gist.github.com/anonymous/3235db049b18699c082b#file-gistfile1-txt

It works with Chrome and Greasemonkey in Firefox. If anyone wants to improve it or package it up nicely, please do; I don't have any prior experience with Javascript or browser extensions.

Obviously this isn't the best solution, but it's the only one we're likely to get.

Re:ITS HIM

[ganjadude]

we are geeks, if there is a geeky solution, even if harder than simply ignoring it. it MUST be done!

First look at what EFF has to say.

[Z00L00K]

Secure Messaging Scorecard - Which apps and tools actually keep your messages safe?

Formatting

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care if it is pseudo boolean logic, tab your fucking code

LAST POST!

[turp182]

Please let it be. Seriously.

i knew it was Bennett

[retchdog]

when i read the waffling "i don't have any evidence, but it's a good bet that i know everything anyway!" bullshit in the lede.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:i knew it was Bennett

[Monkey-Man2000]

I could tell when there was no discernible link to news in the frontpage 'story', and it had the ominous 'Read on for the rest'.

Hey Bennett! Can you tell us the pricing terms to use /. for your own personal blog? I might want to get in on the action.

Re:i knew it was Bennett

[turp182]

I tried submitting a long form submission about dealing with Bennet's crap. It started changing colors pretty fast but then disappeared. Here's what it said:

Submission:

I am sorry this is as long as a Bennett post, I strive to be both clear and concise (with one anecdote).

First, I have to assume Bennett is paid by Dice to write inane postings, and then automatically moved to the front page. I commented on his last submission yesterday: http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , and he even responded asking to be fed (the hidden comment, he likes cheese). He wants the attention.

He appears to basically be an attention whore. I don’t use whore in a derogatory way (for him maybe), but he seems to be on every street corner on Slashdot. In the past I’ve used a Vegas concierge to procure untoward services from a woman for a bachelor party and it was unassuming and not in your face (except in the room of course, thank goodness it didn’t descend into Very Bad Things).

Further, he’s done some respectable things, per his Wikipedia page, regarding First Amendment rights. But all of that is obviously in the past given his propensity to post to Slashdot (and get to the front page a lot, what’s up with that?). It feels like Slashdot is his day job.

I mean him no harm, I just wish that Slashdot was no longer his blog.

He is a scourge upon us, lowering the bar, I fear we may have to have James Cameron dive in his submersible to raise the bar again (South Park reference, great episode).

So how can we deal with this menace? Here are some recommended guidelines.

First, I would recommend many “first post” and “can I subscribe to your newsletter” responses to any Bennett front page article (maybe even “How would a Beowulf Cluster of Bennet handle this”). Do not comment on the submission, just unrelated posts. Post tons of them; thousands if possible (let’s break posting records people!). Let them have the page views, but show how much we care.

As well, when viewing Firehose, check the submitter, and try not to promote his postings.

I will point out that his Wikipedia page actually draws out his success posting to Slashdot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Quote: Haselton is a frequent contributor to Slashdot, where he posts long-form essays rather than short text summaries of current events, a distinction from other contributors that frequently creates controversy.

Anyway, I would never suggest such things, but I would mention that his Wikipedia entry could be updated, maybe to add that his posts are universally loathed on Slashdot.

There seem to be forces at hand that are actively diminishing the quality of Slashdot. Can we do a “beta” smack down on an obviously corporate promoted Bennett? I think we can, and it can be fun!!!!

And big-ups to dnebing for creating a MoveOn.org petition against his postings, awesome:
http://petitions.moveon.org/si..."

"Read on for the rest. "

[QuietLagoon]

No.

troll?

[bored_engineer]

Are these Bennett Haselton posts just trolling by Slashdot editors?

This is a new low

[CptChipJew]

This is a new low when it comes to speculation and overall horseshittiness, even for you Bennett.