A critical part of our work to make Snapchat safer is cooperating with law enforcement and government agencies to fulfill valid requests for information to assist in investigations. We also work to proactively escalate any situations that could involve imminent threats to life or bodily harm.

While most content on Snapchat deletes by default, we work to preserve data and provide account information to government agencies in accordance with applicable law. Once we have received and established the validity of a legal request for Snapchat account records — which is important in verifying the request is being made by a legitimate law enforcement or government agency and not a bad actor — we respond in compliance with applicable law and privacy requirements.

The charts below detail the types of requests we support from law enforcement and government agencies, including subpoenas and summons, court orders, search warrants, and emergency disclosure requests.

The percentage of requests for which some data was produced is calculated as of the publication date, based on requests received within the reporting period. In infrequent situations where a request was determined to contain a deficiency — leading Snap not to produce data — and law enforcement later submitted an amended, valid request after publication of the transparency report, the later production of data would not be reflected in the original or subsequent reporting periods.

This section relates to requests for user information from U.S. government entities, broken down by the types of requests we support.

* Beginning in this reporting period, Snap updated how PRTT requests are counted when embedded within another type of legal process. For legal process containing both a PRTT request and another type of request (e.g. a Search Warrant), we are now counting this legal process towards each applicable category of request. The material increase in the number of PRTT requests reported above as compared to previous reporting periods is a reflection of this new methodology.

This section relates to requests for user information from government entities outside the United States.

* “Accounts Specified” reflects the number of identifiers (e.g., username, email address, and phone number) belonging to a single account specified by law enforcement in legal process when requesting user information. Some legal process may include more than one identifier. In some instances, multiple identifiers may identify a single account. In instances where a single identifier is specified in multiple requests, each instance is included.

This section relates to requests for user information from government entities outside the United States pursuant to a Bilateral Data Access Agreement between that government and the U.S. government.

To the extent Snap has received requests under the Investigatory Powers Act from the United Kingdom pursuant to the US-UK Data Access Agreement, reporting on any such requests will be delayed and in accordance with the applicable requirements of that law. For more information, please see: https://www.ipco.org.uk/publications/annual-reports/.

This section relates to requests for user information pursuant to U.S. national security legal process. The following includes National Security Letters (NSLs) and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court Orders/Directives.

This section relates to demands by a government entity to remove content and accounts that would otherwise be permissible under our Terms of Service or Community Guidelines.

Note: Although we do not formally track when we remove content that violates our policies when a request has been made by a governmental entity, we believe it is an extremely rare occurrence. When we believe it is necessary to restrict content that is deemed unlawful in a particular country, but does not otherwise violate our policies, we seek to restrict access to it geographically when possible, rather than remove it globally.

This category reflects any valid request to remove content allegedly infringing copyright.

This category reflects any valid request to remove content allegedly infringing a trademark.