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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?
FWIW, the date on TFA is yesterday.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
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
Only thing I've seen so far is that the scores and user IDs are appearing in binary. Better than the flood of stupid april fools stories, in my opinion.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Beltane is May 1.
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."
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.
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.
Frosty Piss
I could swear there was a text in the previous post when I clicked reply. Something about restricting Reddit. But now it's changed to "Frosty Piss".
to go back to Usenet?
... these "national security letters" is garbage and is a prime example how far into a totalitarian state america has fallen...
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.
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.
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.
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 have friends who would do something like that. We've had an all-out war with April Fools in the past. Back when I was married (go way back to the early 1990s), my wife didn't mind and I was "on the run from the cops" for the three days leading up to it. It happily, and entirely by sheer luck, was timed with a man-hunt in the area.
I was not on the run. I was not in any trouble at all. This was payback for the year prior when one of our group died. Their funeral was scheduled and even printed up on fliers and handed out by his grieving wife. A few of his family members played along.
We're mostly grown up now but we did have a hell of an extended childhood and we've got the various scars, pictures, and burned bridges to prove it. Calling someone out of a meeting because they were in an accident would be considered tame by some of my friends and associates. Almost nothing is off-limits.
Shit, my accountant is a little old lady who used to work for the State's taxation department. Even SHE has some April Foolishness in her. It being conveniently close to tax time, she's given me a fake print-out. The number was rather high - I do mean high. It took a few minutes before I realized what was going on. She nearly pissed herself with laughter. Ah yes... Accountant humor...
At any rate, no... I don't have any important meetings to be called out of but I could still imagine ways for people to try that with me today. Except, today I'm kind of wise to it. If you called me today and said you had an accident then I'd say call the police and hang the phone up. If you told me your mom died in a parachute accident - and you had an announcement on the television, I'd call you a liar and not send flowers. If you told me my home burned down while I was away, I'd yawn and say I'll file the insurance papers when the authorities notify me.
So, I'm not sure if you have shitty or good friends but no... My friends would HAPPILY get me called out of a meeting. It's even better of it they can get me to fly across the country, drive across the State, or end up in mild legal trouble.
Hmm... Maybe I *do* have shitty friends, now that I think about it. But, they're what I've got and we have had some great times. We're all pretty old now, so we're pretty tame. I have only done one, just one, joke so far...
"Wow, you look great this morning."
"Really? That's so sweet!"
"Ha, no... April Fools! I did make you breakfast, though."
Yeah, she loves me. And we had morning nookie. Life *is* good.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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
I gave Whipslash a suggestion but he didn't follow up on it. I was hoping he'd announce that Slashdot was transferring to Facebook and would use a forum there and then he'd spend all day posting the stories to Facebook and have this site redirect to there.
I'm partially disappointed that he didn't do it. Gotta admit, it would have been very attention-getting.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Happily, no. Who doesn't like morning nookie? Morning nookie is awesome! Though, I admit, not everyone would enjoy the same group of friends and acquaintances as I. Some of us have been in contact with each other for nearly 50 years. We've tamed quite a bit but not entirely.
I've had exactly zero April Fool's jokes played on me today - in the real world. I do not know if I should be grateful or disappointed. However, we absolutely, positively, certainly would get the other called out of a meeting as a prank. Oh, we'd laugh at that uproariously. We've had some elaborate, and creative, things in our lives but, like I said, we've tamed quite a bit.
Time will do that.
Hell, I've a buddy named Lance and if I saw Lance driving - anywhere and anytime (pretty much) then I'd turn around and follow Lance - who knew what was coming and would try to speed away. Oh, I'd follow Lance for as long as it took. When I got the chance, I'd run into his back bumper. (We were both driving shitty cars back then - think American, Dodge, K-car type stuff from the 1980s.) I'd happily ram him but not overly hard. He knew better than to hammer on the brakes 'cause I'd have run into him even faster.
Then I'd wave and drive away.
Why? Well, later that day, if anyone asked what I'd been up to, I'd say, "Oh, not much. I ran into Lance today."
Yes, yes I did used to drink - a lot.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."