Government Requests and Copyrighted Content Takedown Notices (DMCA)

July 1, 2023 – December, 2023

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 content that could involve imminent threats to life or bodily harm.

While most content on Snapchat deletes by default, we work to preserve 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.

Also, 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.

United States Government Information Requests

Requests for User Information from U.S. government entities.

International Government Information Requests

Requests for User Information from government entities outside the United States.

* 「帳戶識別工具」代表執法單位透過法律程序索取用戶資訊時,所指定屬於單一帳戶的識別工具 (包括:用戶名稱、電子郵件地址、電話號碼) 數量。部分法律程序可能包含多種識別工具。部分情況下,多個識別工具可能代表單一帳戶。在多個要求相同識別工具的情況下,每個情況都會包含在內。

**巴西所顯示的「其他資訊調閱請求」次數已更新,以修正先前無心的錯誤。

United States National Security Requests

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.

Governmental Content Removal Requests

This category identifies demands made by a government entity to remove content 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.

As an additional note, our teams have begun to further improve our governmental takedown operations, to track the information required to be disclosed under the Digital Services Act. In future reports, we will roll out new data points in this category.

Notices of Copyright Infringement

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