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Reddit Deletes Surveillance 'Warrant Canary' In Transparency Report (reuters.com)
Arthur Dent '99 writes: Today, Reddit deleted wording in its transparency report that would normally indicate that they had not received any "national security letters" or "other classified requests for user information." Such "national security letters" contain penalties for telling others about the request, as the government wishes to keep the request secret. However, because Reddit had placed pre-existing wording in their transparency report in the event of such a letter, they were able to simply delete the existing wording to passively inform others that a request had been received, without actually saying anything at all. This usage of pre-existing wording is known as a "warrant canary" to indicate danger, such as real canaries were used in the past to indicate the presence of deadly gases in coal mines.
Sounds like a cool progressive site. Anyone got a link?
The original wording will be back tomorrow.
Happy Beltaine for all the Wickers and Irish people.
It's April 1st and this is slashdot. Fool me once, blah blah blah. i'm just removing the bookmark for this site for the next 24 hours.
If you need to legitimately collect information, consider that behaving like the Stasi probably sends the wrong message.
Folks are growing tired of the if you have nothing to hide ruse.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Reddit is also more restricted than the users might expect. You can, for example, post certain comments about censorship and automated comment removal only to find out that they will never appear to other users and only your user can see them.
When we get a President who tells them to stop spying on the American people and prosecute every Saudi state proselytizer for sedition. 2/3 of the threat of terrorism could be stopped by heavily building up the Border Patrol and Coast Guard and ordering the FBI to unleash Hell on every Wahhabi and Salafist preacher in the US. Lock up the preachers for preaching terrorism and jihad. Use asset forfeiture to seize the state funds coming from the royal family.
But then again, we are at war with ISIS despite the fact that our own "allies" are funding it and transferring American weapons to it. I am at times tempted to vote for Trump simply because he's the only guy who's enough of an asshole to gently pull the Saudi king's ear close to him and whisper "I cannot be responsible if the CIA puts a 0.50 round in your head if the funds to ISIS don't dry up."
Whodathunk!
Reddit isn't the only place that's an "over-moderated propaganda safe space". All of the major and minor discussion sites with public moderation systems are like that now. Hacker News, Stack Overflow, and even Slashdot to some extent exhibit this problem. That's because the problem isn't with the sites, it's with the thin-skinned hipsters and Millennials who abuse the moderation systems on those sites. As more hipster and Millennial types have started using these sites, the moderation abuse has ramped up, resulting in what we're faced with now. The type of moderation system doesn't even matter. If there's some way of censoring other users, then hipsters and Millennials will find a way to severely abuse it to suppress any and all discussion they disagree with.
Yes, I'm sure that Reddit and other users like Apple have terrible lawyers, and we should all take the advice of a semi-anonymous stranger on Slashdot.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Your whole argument falls appart if they never pre-emptively said anything. The text was there. Now it's not. If they don't say anything about it and never have - then it hasn't "told" anybody anything, if people draw implications from it, that's THEIR responsibility - not reddits.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Until there's a legal challenge to a warrant canary it does mean something. It's not a matter of deleting something but of failing to publish. That's an important difference. The government can't yet compel a person or company to actively tell a lie. The legal foundation (IMO unconstitutional but that's a whole new rant) for these gag orders does not include language that could allow the government to compel such a thing.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
The govt can't force you to say something. It's a constitution hack.
Its cute that using a warrant canary makes people think that it gets them out of legal obligations, but it really doesn't.
When you pre-emotively tell people 'if we delete this, it means we got something we can't tell you about', when you delete it ... its effectively telling them right, we all know thats what it means, right?
Try to argue in court against a judge that you didn't tell people about the secret order, go ahead, lets see how that works out for you.
It blows me away that people think something like a warrant canary is clever enough to get around the people enforcing the requirement not to tell anyone.
Do you think the school yard bully gives a shit when you tell him you didn't do anything and didn't make fun of him while all the kids are laughing at hime cause you made fun of him? You guys are really out of touch with reality of you think this 'warrant canary' thing is to be trusted. Honestly, its not naive, its all the way to stupid.
Wouldn't it depend on the order's wording? "You must not tell anyone" vs "You must not communicate by any means" could make the difference here.
Granted this technical 'out' would probably only work once, if it worked at all.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
It's yet another question of what constitutes "speech". The courts have interpreted all sorts of things to be protected "speech". Even things that had nothing at all to do with tongues and larynxes.
Usually, folks around here applaud the courts when they decide that, for example, source code is speech. Will we still be applauding when they decide that pressing "Delete" is speech?
to go back to Usenet?
I think it's also predicated on the belief that the law cannot compel you to commit an act that itself could end up with you being taken to court. For instance, in the case of an affirmative assertion like "We have not been the subject of an NSL", continuing to make the statement would turn it into slander or libel, depending on the means of delivery.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I don't think anyone said "if we delete this", instead they just remove "we didn't receive a secret order" it is just implicit that if it is no longer there they might have/probably did
are you arguing that you can violate a gag order by not commenting on whether or not you got one?
Legality? You wanna talk "legality"? Here's "legality" for you...
National Security Letters (NSLs), are issued only by the FBI (not by a judge in any court), and ARE NOT LEGAL as such, further, in FACT, they are UNCONSTITUTIONAL violating both the fourth and the first. "Legally" you can post them to any public billboard, REFUSE to do anything they say, and generally WIPE YOUR ASS with them and hand them back to the FBI for fun.
Unfortunately, you are all SHEEP and do whatever people tell you to do.
Instead of, you know, bothering to learn a little about the law of the land and about your rights.
And then fighting stupid shit like NSLs.
Quit giving your rights away.
Dumbfucks.
A notification is a notification, regardless of how you dress it up.
... these "national security letters" is garbage and is a prime example how far into a totalitarian state america has fallen...
No; It's the difference between gagging you to prevent you from releasing sensitive information and forcing you to explicitly state an untruth.
I let you figure out which is which. Consider also the phrase "No comment" in response to certain pointed kinds of questions.
Except that this is not the first warrant canary to be deployed successfully, and we have yet to have anyone prosecuted for it.
If you have a counter case, by all means, enlighten us.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Just start watching each other. Make reports of your co-workers, neighbors, even closest friends. It worked in the Soviet Union, why can't for you?
A notification is a notification, regardless of how you dress it up.
The world isn't that autistic.
I think it's also predicated on the belief that the law cannot compel you to commit an act that itself could end up with you being taken to court. For instance, in the case of an affirmative assertion like "We have not been the subject of an NSL", continuing to make the statement would turn it into slander or libel, depending on the means of delivery.
No, it wouldn't, in any way imaginable. Who would be getting defamed? How would the statement be considered defamatory? It'd be fraudulent, but there's no way that it would ever have anything to do with slander or libel.
And what information have they transmitted? Only that:
1) Some sort of agency made some sort of request that merited the removal of the canary
2) They didn't receive a request, but they think they might, so they've removed it preemptively.
3) Their lawyers decided having a canary was a risk, so they removed it
4) They decided to remove the canary as an April fools joke
At best, you can say it's either #1 or #4 because they didn't explain themselves. But the point is, your lack of imagination doesn't mean that they've broken the law.
In Soviet Russia, NSL wipes its @ss with you.
Welcome to Soviet Russia comrade.
In 2013, NSLs were found unconstitutional by a Federal Court. In 2015 a Federal Court of Appeals told that court to reconsider its opinion in light of changes to the USA Freedom Act. Anyone know the current status of that case and/or the enforceability state of NSLs at this time?
Technically, the government could pursue a case that the canary's disappearance constitutes telling constructively. They won't because ot's doubtful that the gag order is Constitutional in the first place, so if they challenge they might lose it entirely.
Let's check the empirical data. Number of people prosecuted for taking down a warrant canary: 0.
When you pre-emotively tell people 'if we delete this, it means we got something we can't tell you about', when you delete it ... its effectively telling them right, we all know thats what it means, right?
That doesn't mean that a lawyer can't argue it. You can say, "Sure, you're not technically telling them outright, but you're telling them..." but sometimes law is all about those little technicalities.
Exactly how is the message posted? In what context? Like maybe if you put the word "safe" on your websites front page and say, "I'm going to change this to unsafe if we get a warrant!" and then you change it to "unsafe", then maybe that's not legal because it's on your front page, it's clearly serving no other purpose than being a canary, and you're making an addition by adding "un-" to the word. However, what if it just disappears instead of being changed to "unsafe"? What if you don't explicitly tell people that it's a canary? What if it's not directly on the front page, but it's part of a monthly privacy report that you generate, and every month you say, "We haven't received warrants from the government," and then one month you just leave that part out?
Do these changes make a difference? I don't know, but law is all about these kinds of technicalities, and sometimes a very small change puts you on the other side of the law.
Try to argue in court against a judge
No problem. Let's just enter that NSL into evidence and see exactly what it does or does not say we are allowed to do. Eventually, the FBI/NSA/whoever is going to run up against a company with deep enough pockets. And that company will find it worth it's while to screw with them for a while. And maybe even make them look like a bunch of fools in front of a judge.
Keep in mind that this entire NSL garbage is a maneuver to bypass judicial oversight and the search warrant system. So I imagine there are a lot of judges that are just aching to get these TLAs into court and rake them over the coals.
Have gnu, will travel.
Pretty sure that's what Apple was fighting.
A court order that said they had to say something (in software).
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The legal reasoning is that the government can't compel you to lie. If one disagrees with this notion, I believe that the concept of perjury should go out the window.
We're at war with the low profit margins of defense companies. Eternal war and being the world's policeman benefits nobody else but the makers of military equipment and providers of military services.
Or did you think the F-35 was actually supposed to work one day?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
that goes back to the example from information theory, if you agree to call you mom if everything is ok, then not calling transfers the information that you might not be not ok and you should be paying the phone company for transferring that information
A notification is a notification, regardless of how you dress it up.
This fails the hierarchy. The government cannot (legally yet) compel false speech on the part of a person or corporation.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'm sure the EFF, and possibly the ACLU would be delighted to take up this challenge. Because, it's an important legal point. Can you be obligated to lie? There really isn't a lot of legal precedent for people being legally forced to do so.
Are you some retard Trumpfer? This doesn't hurt government they got the information they wanted, the warrant canary is gone. Any future requests will not be revealed and the company simply informed that they are cooperating with the secret above the law government. Welcome to the police state of united cowards and trumpfers.
I'm sorry. I can neither confirm nor deny that any agency or agencies have made it impossible to confirm or deny something that they or some other agency might have done, refused to do, forced me to do or say, or forbidden me to do or say.
If I wanted to undermine canaries, I would find popular sites and NSL them for NSL's sake. I don't even have to have a real target user. Just use a NSL to kill the canary. Then later (a month from now, a year from now .. whenever the need arises), I can NSL again for whoever I'm really investigating.
Indeed, if I had that power, it would be irresponsible of me to not do it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
when you delete it
That's not how warrant canaries work. They would be useless if they did.
You post a new warrant canary periodically. If you stop posting, people know you have been hit with a warrant. Legally it is very difficult for government agencies to force you to keep posting warrant canaries.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Correct. Under Sarbanes-Oxley, if a publicly-traded corporation knowingly makes a false statement like that in a public filing, it could even be a felony on the part of the directors to sign off on such a filing. One law (SarbOx) requires that the statement be removed when executives know it to be false. Another law (presumably in some secret court where the judge is paid to prioritize the secret laws regarding NSLs over the other laws on the books) would ideally - but may not actually legally require that the false statement not be removed.
It would be an interesting case, and that's why warrant canaries have never been tested in court.
The government also can't force you not to say something. You still have first amendment rights. You can talk about your NSL letter at the bar, to a journalist etc. The only reason people can't say something is when they have themselves bound by a business-type contract and then you just have to wonder what type of contract they have with the government/three-letter-agencies.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The government can force you to not speak. They can't force your company to say a specific thing, especially a specific thing that isn't true inside a legal document. The canary method of informing users is as legal as it gets.
They could add a new one "Reddit has not received any reequests from these government agencies since MONTH DD, YYYY: CIA, NSA, TSA (etc). We are not allowed to comment on whether or not we have received any such requests from the FBI however we can tell you we have not received any requests for information from them between Month, DD, YYYY and now."
Or they should just say fuck it, exercise freedom of the press as it is an inalienable right reinforced by the first amendment and announce that there was an inquiry received, because we do not live under an oppressive regime.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
To prosecute someone for it, you'd have to acknowledge the NSL yourself. And why would they do that?
They are truly idiotic for releasing this on April first, if they want people to take them seriously.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Yes, they do it all the time. The whole thing about a gag order is that its entire purpose is to keep you from communicating a fact. If you set it up so that some code or action communicates that fact, even the conscious decision to not do something you normally do, then you violate it. It is the same idea behind my calling my spouse every night at 9 PM to let him or her know I'm OK when I travel. By not making such a call, I am communicating that I am not OK and you would have to be batty to not admit such and the assumption people would take is automatically the worst case.
Reddit has also been censoring posts lately by removing them from various subreddits without explanation. Typically these are posts which go against it's leftist liberal views. One of the biggest examples was the Cologne sexual assaults, which were continuously removed over a 3-day period until finally being permitted. A more recent example can be seen here: https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/4ctuew/found_this_on_rwtf/
This post refers to another post which contained a video showing a black woman assaulting a white man because he has dread locks. This post was immediately removed from /r/videos, /r/politics, and /r/wtf with no reason given several times (posted by several users). The removed post can be still be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/4cswsg/white_guys_cant_have_dreadlocks/
The worst part is you can't even link to the removed post on reddit, as it will automatically be removed as well. It appears this was easily circumvented by using a shortlink, however.
It is not always true but it is often true that you can tell a great deal about the person by their grasp of their native language.
Note: It is not always true, like I said. Sometimes they're brilliant but, in my experience, that is a rarity. Sometimes the opposite is true.
However, I'd not suggest taking legal advice from someone who lacks a basic grasp of the language. Language is ESSENTIAL to legal scholars and those who practice law. They are very attentive, not just to what they say but to how they say it -- with obvious variations in skill levels and aptitude. I think it's reasonable to conclude that they're not actually the legal expert they claim to be.
Note: That doesn't mean they're necessarily wrong. Even a blind dog finds a bone once in a while.
They could be right but it would appear that this is entirely untested. Thus, their speculation that it is illegal is (as far as I know) bogus. There's no precedent set to support their claim and the de facto stance is legal unless otherwise ruled or, if you'd prefer, the presumption of innocence. It may very well be ruled illegal in the future but, as of now, it's perfectly legal and will remain so until someone decides it is illegal. I humbly submit that that someone will not, in fact, be a random Slashdot poster.
I am not a lawyer but I know a lot of lawyers and have spent a great deal of time geeking out on the law. I even make it a point to go and observe the courts (even when I don't need to be there) and have defended myself (while retaining council) successfully on multiple occasions. Not only am I not a lawyer, I'm specifically not your lawyer. Consult a qualified legal assistant prior to deleting your favorite warrant canary.
Were I a more malicious person, I'd find my way into sites like Reddit and delete their warrant canary when I got there. What are they gonna do, put it back and claim it wasn't done by them? Fortunately, I'm not a malicious person and I've not broken into any computer (without permission) in a very long time.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Yes they can, next time read up on abortion "disclosure" laws, as the most obvious example.
But is an absence of notification itself a notification?
Unfortunately, you are all SHEEP and do whatever people tell you to do.
Instead of, you know, bothering to learn a little about the law of the land and about your rights.
And then fighting stupid shit like NSLs.
Quit giving your rights away.
Dumbfucks.
Bold words. Bold words, more often than not, come from those who are not threatened nor have anything directly at stake.
So, tell me Mr. AC, how many NSLs have you declared illegal, wiped your ass with, and handed back to the FBI? 'Cause I'm betting that number is a number that is less than one.
And that's okay... We all think we're tough and will do the right thing when faced with adversity. Really, you won't. You don't. You haven't.
But, it's fun to talk big on the 'net, 'cause on the internet nobody knows you're a dog. However, your bold and noble speech means naught when we all know you'll cower, quivering and near tears, when/if you get such a letter. Me? I'd like to think I'd do the right thing. I'd like to think that I'd do the appropriate thing and tell anyone/everyone while refusing to comply. I've never been in that situation, thankfully.
There's not a whole lot they can do to me so maybe I'd do the right thing. Who knows? Probably not. I'm quite skeptical that you'd do the right thing - having no history of your actions on which to base it. Then again, I'm inclined to also believe you probably don't have anything for which they'd serve an NSL.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Yeah, my bad; not enough coffee. You're quite correct - it would be a fraudulent statement; I had the wrong "type" of lie.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
It has already happened. The EFF is currently working with 2 such cases I believe. They actually made it to the 9th circuit appeals court and weresent back down to be reconsidered in terms of the "USA Freedom Act" which made superficial changes to the NSL code.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
Apparently the FBI and NSA have plenty to hide, if they invoke the adage then they would have the most fingers pointed at them
The thing about NSLs is that USGovernment is the least interested in having them challenged in an -actual- court (not FISA). NSLs are made to sound super scary, and they actually work that way. It will be interesting when someone stands up to them clearly and unequivocally (FBI v Apple started to ring a bell, but FBI backed out).
So it's very doubtful that the gov't will try to go after someone for erasing a canary, since that will take them in a road that they very much want to avoid.
What makes the assclowns "liberal" if they demand conformity and group think?
Its more of a moderate circle jerk.
So the warrant canary on this site is the word slashvertisment: gotcha.
Suppose Reddit set up a whole suite of warrant canary warning pages: ...
"Reddit has not received any NSL requests during January 2016 for people with a last name beginning in A."
"Reddit has not received any NSL requests during January 2016 for people with a last name beginning in B."
"Reddit has not received any NSL requests during January 2016 for people with a last name beginning in C."
"Reddit has not received any NSL requests during December 2016 for people with a last name beginning in X."
"Reddit has not received any NSL requests during December 2016 for people with a last name beginning in Y."
"Reddit has not received any NSL requests during December 2016 for people with a last name beginning in Z."
Then when they get an NSL request they delete one line.
Extending this to more dates and more letters of the name is left as an exercise.
Have those laws survived court challenge?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
A gag order does not compel you to speak and lie that you don't have one.
So far, every case that I know of that went to courts where the law compelled private speech, was ultimately found unconstitutional per the First Amendment.
The legal reasoning is that the government can't compel you to lie. If one disagrees with this notion, I believe that the concept of perjury should go out the window.
And that legal reasoning is dubious at best, when they certainly have the will, the methods, and the means to compel you to say anything but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Actually, the government can compel you to lie. This is a government written script (quoting from memory, so maybe not 100%):
"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters in this area, in voluntarily cooperation with the Federal Communications Commission..."
As long as the EBS was active, broadcasters were required to read this script, but their cooperation was not voluntary. The tests were required, you had to log when you did them and keep the log for a couple of years. The government required every broadcaster in the country to lie.
The thing about NSLs is that USGovernment is the least interested in having them challenged in an -actual- court (not FISA). NSLs are made to sound super scary, and they actually work that way. It will be interesting when someone stands up to them clearly and unequivocally (FBI v Apple started to ring a bell, but FBI backed out).
So it's very doubtful that the gov't will try to go after someone for erasing a canary, since that will take them in a road that they very much want to avoid.
You should read more history.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
I really should. Would honestly thank you if you pointed me to cases where the USGov't has actively gone after someone for deleting a canary, or done anything other than sealing cases made against NSLs. (other than the Calyx case). Thank you.