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.

Although content on Snapchat generally deletes by default after a period, 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.

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

* "Accounts Specified" reflects the number of unique accounts indicated by law enforcement in legal process when requesting user information.  Thus, where multiple identifiers in a legal request identify a single account, they are counted as one “Account Specified” in the above tables. In instances where a unique account is specified in multiple requests, each request is counted as a separate "Account Specified."

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. In accordance with legal requirements, we disclose this data in ranges of 500.

* 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/. 

** Snap is prohibited from publishing any information regarding requests received under the US-Australia Data Access Agreement, except for the total number of requests received in this 6-month reporting period.

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.  We disclose this data in ranges of 250.

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: The metrics above relate to valid legal orders received from governmental authorities, which require Snap to take down content and / or account(s) that do(es) not violate our policies. These metrics exclude: (i) requests for the removal of content and / or account(s) that are not valid legal orders, and (ii) requests and orders targeting content and / or account(s) that we determine violate our policies.

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.