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Reddit Deletes Surveillance 'Warrant Canary' In Transparency Report (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the deductive-reasoning dept.

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.

5 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Reddit by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sounds like a cool progressive site. Anyone got a link?

    1. Re:Reddit by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's a new Digg. It got more popular but realizing 15-30 year old males weren't profitable they're trying to pivot themselves into being the 'social media' site for stay at home moms. Popular stories now showing up on Today show. This did require them to go after their core base, deleting a lot of subreddits that didn't fit that image. Now it's just full of whiners that don't know how to type other addresses into the browser.

      Plus they have 'moderation' but it allows everyone to moderate meaning it's near useless.

    2. Re: Reddit by SirSlud · · Score: 3, Funny

      Full of whiners, you say.... bwuahahaha. Did you type all that with a straight face?

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    3. Re: Reddit by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 3, Funny

      Full of whiners, you say.... bwuahahaha. Did you type all that with a straight face?

      Odds are he used fingers...

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
  2. Re:It's April 1st by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Funny

    Better than the flood of stupid april fools stories, in my opinion.

    Having been traumatized by the "OMG! Ponies" theme years ago, I always cringe when I first load Slashdot on April 1st, since I have no idea what to expect.

    Honestly, it might be one of my more productive days, because I've learned to stay the hell away from the interwebs due to the sheer amount of crap which happens. :-P

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.