Can My Eyes Only media be accessed by law enforcement via account or device subpoenas, according to Snapchat’s legal or help documentation?

1. What Snapchat’s Law Enforcement Guide actually says about “My Eyes Only”

Snap’s Law Enforcement Guide and related support pages describe Memories as cloud-backed and explain that users “may choose to encrypt their content in Memories by saving it in ‘My Eyes Only,’ in which case the content is not accessible to Snap and cannot be decrypted by Snap” ^{[1] [5]}. That language is explicit: Snap portrays My Eyes Only as a user-controlled encryption layer that prevents Snap from reading or decrypting those files on its servers ^[1].

2. What Snapchat will produce under legal process

Separately, Snap’s law-enforcement-facing material and transparency pages make clear that the company honors formal legal requests, preserves account records under 18 U.S.C. § 2703(f), and will provide available account data when a valid request is established ^{[3] [2]}. Those disclosures cover account records, preserved backups and the types of legal process Snap accepts (subpoenas, court orders, warrants, emergency disclosures), and they are reported in Snap’s transparency reports ^{[2] [4]}.

3. The practical gap between “Snap can’t decrypt” and law enforcement access

Snap’s documentation draws a bright line about what Snap itself can produce: it cannot decrypt or read My Eyes Only content ^[1]. That does not, however, categorically say the content is forever inaccessible to law enforcement by any means. Snap’s materials do not provide a step‑by‑step statement about every possible route (for example, device‑level forensic extraction or user disclosure), and they focus on what Snap can and will supply in response to legal process—namely account records, preserved backups, and other server‑side data ^{[3] [2]}. Snap’s public documentation therefore implies that a subpoena or warrant served on Snap will not yield decrypted My Eyes Only media because Snap lacks the ability to decrypt it ^[1], but Snap will comply with lawful requests for whatever server‑side data it has ^[2].

4. Outside perspectives and common caveats

Legal commentators and Q&A sites commonly note that law enforcement often uses warrants and device searches to obtain content that providers cannot decrypt on their own; those sources assert that police “may request data from Snapchat or use device access methods” and that lawful process can result in access to content via other channels ^{[6] [7]}. Those points reflect a practical reality: a warrant to search an unlocked phone or a successful forensic extraction may reveal My Eyes Only files if they exist on the device and are not separately protected there, a scenario Snap’s own documents do not explicitly address ^[6]. These views are not Snap’s own statements, however, and the company’s materials limit their commitments to what they control on their systems ^{[1] [3]}.

5. Bottom line and limits of available documentation

According to Snapchat’s official legal and help materials, My Eyes Only content saved in Memories is encrypted in a way that Snap cannot decrypt, and therefore Snap cannot produce decrypted My Eyes Only media in response to subpoenas or warrants directed at Snap ^{[1] [5]}. Simultaneously, Snap will comply with valid legal process for account records, preserve data under statutory preservation requests, and produces other types of account information where available ^{[3] [2]}. The documents do not comprehensively address scenarios where law enforcement obtains content directly from a user’s unlocked device or via other non‑Snap channels, so conclusions about those routes must rely on outside legal analysis rather than Snap’s own documentation ^{[1] [6]}.