back to article Snapchat 'hack' pics mostly clothed user snaps, odd bits of legacy pr0n – report

Last week's SnapChat image leak has turned out to be a damp squib rather than the serious privacy breach anticipated by many in the wake of the "Fappening". As previously reported, 200,0000 private photos and videos sent using the SnapChat application and archived using the unofficial (and now defunct) SnapSaved.com site …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "... which I have since deleted." -- Yeah, right

    "The vast majority of them do not contain nudity" -- How big a sample do you need to take in order to summarise that much media content?

    "Of those that do contain nudity, most do not show a face." -- I didn't the a person's face was the point of nudie photos?

    "... no photos in the sample I examined featuring nudes of obviously under age subjects." -- So as long as someone isn't obviously underage, it's Ok?

    "Of the photos that did feature nudity and a recognizable face, several were of professional models," -- And the others were his mates?

    "and one had a Playboy logo in the corner." -- Call the lawyers!

    1. John G Imrie

      "... no photos in the sample I examined featuring nudes of obviously under age subjects." -- So as long as someone isn't obviously underage, it's Ok?

      No, but it does mean that the local Police Officer won't have to call round, what with having nude images of a minor being a strict liability offence.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: the local Police Officer won't have to call round

        ... which begs the question - if the analyst had seen any "obviously under age" subjects while investigating, would they have said so?

        1. tony72

          Re: the local Police Officer won't have to call round

          "... which begs the question - if the analyst had seen any "obviously under age" subjects while investigating, would they have said so?"

          Well, he's not the only person who's seen the archive, so if he claimed there was no obviously under-age material and there actually was, it would have been a pretty obvious lie.

          Also, contrary to slightly hysterical popular opinion, the law is not usually applied in a completely blind and stupid fashion; if you come into possession of some under-age material entirely inadvertently, and then do the correct thing thereafter (report/delete/etc), you are not going to be in trouble.

          So no good reason for the analyst to lie.

          1. The First Dave

            Re: the local Police Officer won't have to call round

            Trouble is, this bloke clearly went looking for this archive.

            And quite clearly, he _expected_ there to be nudity; and he _expected_ there to be under-age subjects, so the "purely for research" defence is distinctly shaky, unless he has a note from his boss not only asking him to do this research, but also making it quite clear that it was the idea of his boss...

            And under those circumstances, if he _had_ come across this accidentally, with the above knowledge he really should have deleted it _without_ opening it.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @John G Imrie

        I think the author is possibly emphasising that the subject only has to look underage for it to be an offence. He doesn't mention the other end of the scale, a picture of 90 year old great grandmother dressed up as a schoolgirl with inent to arouse would fall foul of the law.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The most interesting thing here for me was the quote from Mark James that seemed to show he really had no idea how Snapchat works.

      Everyone knows you can save snaps on snapchat. Phones have a screenshot function. You don't even need third party stuff.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Being a bit of a Devil's Advocate...

    Why are we getting fussed about exposing criminals?

    1) It's illegal to make naughty images of persons aged 13-17.

    2) Presumably it's still illegal even if they are selfies

    3) Therefore any person aged 13-17 making a nude selfie and distributing it via Snapchat is a serious criminal and perv and should be sent to an appropriate young persons corrective institution and put on the Sex Offenders Register for life.

    4) Surely, instead of worrying about a minor bit of hacking, the Police should be tracking down these sick young perverts and banging them up for life so that their evil and revolting activities don't corrupt the rest of us.

    5) Obviously if they wait until their 18th birthday then none of the above applies and it's all just a bit of fun.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Being a bit of a Devil's Advocate...

      > It's illegal to make naughty images of persons aged 13-17.

      Actually, I think you'll find that the age of consent in most of Europe is 16..

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Being a bit of a Devil's Advocate...

        > Actually, I think you'll find that the age of consent in most of Europe is 16..

        Actually, this doesn't matter. The the age of consent is 16 in much of the US too. But somehow 18 got standardized as the minimum age to do porn, more or less worldwide.

        1. DJO Silver badge

          Re: Being a bit of a Devil's Advocate...

          It does get tricky, is every owner of the Blind Faith album inadvertently an evil pervy paedo who should be incarcerated for their own good? Probably not, well not all of them anyway.

          What about the Nirvana album with the swimming naked boy? Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy? and so on ad infinitum. That's just record covers, mainstream art is even worse.

      2. jonathanb Silver badge

        Re: Being a bit of a Devil's Advocate...

        The age of consent for carrying out the activity is 16, but it is illegal to photograph anyone under the age of 18 carrying out the activity, even if the activity in question is legal. In any case, people under the age of 16 are allowed to remove their clothes in private, but it is still illegal to photograph it.

        1. paulc

          Re: Being a bit of a Devil's Advocate...

          hmmm what about various magazine pictorials and Sun page 3 shots taken before the age got raised from 16 to 18...

          The Sun made a big song and dance of Debbee Ashby with a countdown to her sixteenth birthday befors finally showing here topless on that day. Sam Fox started out on page 3 before she was 18.

          Mayfair, men only and other magazines have all run pictorials including full nudity of girls under 18 back then.

  3. Khaptain Silver badge

    Underage ?

    Has the underage stuff moved into mainstream now or is this El Reg hack inadvertantly admitting something that publically he/she probably shouldn't ?

    What's next, "I thoroughly checked the material but didn't find any pics of rabid preteen dwarfs licking donkey balls whilst suspended from the rafters of the local orphanage".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Underage ?

      Has the underage stuff moved into mainstream now [...] ?

      I donno, why don't you ask the Daily Mail.

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: Underage ?

        Ooohhh, after clicking on the "educational link " I see that it is not so far from the truth.....

        ( I do not buy newspapers so I suppose that I am a bit out of touch as far as the daily rags are concerned ).

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh, shock horror

    So basically as I summised in a respsone to a previous article about this, DM style headline grabbing.

  5. Crazy Operations Guy

    reinforcing my rule of Internet Content

    'If you want something on the internet, it will only stay up as long as you are watching; if you don't want something on the internet, it will stay there forever'

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Honey Pot

    So, how many of the downloaders got their IPs logged and are now under suspicion. I know, I know, I'm behind 7 proxies.

    In another vein, why don't we take the "alcohol/tobacco" approach? You know, no one under 18 is allowed to have a phone with a camera. (yeah, right--never happen)

    1. chris lively

      Re: Honey Pot

      The sad thing is, this doesn't appear to be an age related problem.

      It's more a confluence of "humanity is mostly stupid" and "tech doesn't do exactly what we want" problem.

  7. A J Stiles

    Is anybody really surprised?

    When you rely on proprietary technology to do something, then you surrender control over it.

    When you are relying on proprietary technology to do something that is demonstrably mathematically impossible, then there is no way it's going to end well.

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