If you murder someone, you probably shouldn’t take a Snapchat selfie with the victim’s body
This is probably both the saddest and most shocking thing you’ll read today. A 16-year-old teen was murdered last week by a classmate. The reasoning is unknown at the moment, but it’s what the murderer did immediately following the heinous crime that has us more puzzled: he took a selfie with the victim and sent it out through Snapchat.
That’s the story Pittsburgh police delivered to the Tribune-Review. The killer thought it a good idea to publicize what he’d done, and considering Snapchat deletes photos “forever” after they’ve been viewed he probably figured he wouldn’t be caught. What he didn’t know is that it’s ridiculously easy to save images sent through Snapchat, and it’s that very reason police were able to track him down so easily.
If that weren’t enough, anyone who’s bothered to read through Snapchat’s terms of use and privacy policy knows they don’t immediately delete the files from their server if it hasn’t been viewed by every recipient:
Delete is our default. That means that most messages sent through our Services will be automatically deleted once they have been viewed or have expired. But—and this is important—you should understand that users who see your messages can always save them, either by taking a screenshot or by using some other image-capture technology (whether that be software or even something as old-fashioned as a camera to take a photo of your device’s screen). If we’re able to detect that a recipient took a screenshot of a message you sent, we’ll try to notify you. But the same common sense that applies to the Internet at large applies to Snapchat as well: Don’t send messages that you wouldn’t want someone to save or share.
In most cases, once we detect that all recipients have viewed a message, we automatically delete it from our servers. And again in most cases, the Services are programmed to delete the message from the recipients’ device as well.
The terms go on to list other cases where they won’t immediately delete a photo, such as if you save it as part of a “Snapchat Story” or if you allow people to view a snap more than once. It sounds like police could have just as easily requested the info from Snapchat if someone didn’t think to save the photo.
A warrant to search his home turned up a hidden 9mm pistol that seemed to match a 9mm bullet casing found at the murder scene, though ballistics have yet to confirm it as the murder weapon. There’s no problem on that front, though, considering the teen admitted to the crime. We suppose it’d be pretty hard to deny having anything to do with the dead body you foolishly took a selfie with.,
You have to be pretty sick to not only murder someone, but also to take an image with the body to glorify the action. That, or you’re just plum dumb. Either way, thank you for making it easy to pin you to a cell for the rest of your life to make sure you don’t do it again.
[via The Verge]