Reddit Deletes Surveillance 'Warrant Canary' In Transparency Report (reuters.com) 178
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.
Reddit (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Reddit (Score:5, 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.
Re: Reddit (Score:4, Funny)
Full of whiners, you say.... bwuahahaha. Did you type all that with a straight face?
Re: Reddit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Reddit (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of people migrated to voat.co after the great SJW mod censorshitting.
The problem is with hipsters/Millennials. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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then hipsters and Millennials will find a way to severely abuse it to suppress any and all discussion they disagree with.
Implying they are the problem rather than the preceding generation which bubble wrapped their little preciouses while they were growing up?
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then hipsters and Millennials will find a way to severely abuse it to suppress any and all discussion they disagree with.
Implying they are the problem rather than the preceding generation which bubble wrapped their little preciouses while they were growing up?
What generation would that be?
...definitely not the Xers.
I assume you're talking about the Boomers... [pewresearch.org]
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And if you're tying to imply that Gen-X'ers don't bubble-wrap their kids, you're wrong. As a Gen-X'er, I have noticed a sharp contrast with how we were raised (by Boomers), which could be a style best described as 'free-range', and how members of my generation now raises their kids. I don't like what I see, and I doubt I would 'succeed' as a modern parent.
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Funny how the single most awesome subreddit on all of reddit throughout all this history is /r/kerbalspaceprogram - and just so happens to be widely known as the nicest one.
People being nice, being respectful to one another does not in any way diminish the capacity for meaningful debate or intelligent conversation or hamper any of the useful things about free speech at all. If anything it actually assists those things by inviting more people to participate.
Re: Reddit (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true right up until you start defining "being respectful" as "agreeing with the groupthink". And if you're pretending that's not the definition of respect on the new Reddit I'll call you a liar.
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Is groupthink needed in /r/kerbalspaceprogram?
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Just respond and give an example. I get 15 mod points all the time on slashdot, but I rarely use them because of situations exactly like this.
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Says the guy on slashdot....
Re: Reddit (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. The worst thing you can do about someone complaining about the direction the site is going is suggest to them that they type another URL. You'll get nothing but push back from 20 somethings olds that have been on Reddit since it launched. They lose their shit about how they're being 'censored' despite every other website still working.
I'm sitting here watching Good Morning America & The Today Show and they're getting live Twitter feedback. You can't have wild card unsafe spaces view-able to the mainstream. "Twitter is censoring me!", "Stop using it", "BUT I CAN'T NOT USE TWITTER MAKE THEM STOP CENSORING ME".
When Slashdot went down the tubes I found Reddit. Now that Slashdot is under new ownership and they seem to care about the 'core base' I'm back. I never got over the Fark redesign and new moderation. (They also tried to pander to the same crowd, getting rid of Foobies on the main page). There are thousands of forums, websites, IRC channels, etc out there. If you disagree with one there's no reason not to move on.
Re: Reddit (Score:4, Interesting)
> If you disagree with one there's no reason not to move on.
I can do that. You can do that. They probably can't (easily) do that. They have a vested, emotional, interest in their "internet home." Me? I've been online, in one form or another, since the mid-1980s. I've seen communities come and go. I've left more sites than I can count. It's reached the point where I don't even bother to voice my displeasure, I just wander off and stop visiting entirely one day.
I, and probably you, grew up when our site, or even the internet, were't ubiquitous things or even consistent things. How many forums have you seen come and go? How many have you, yourself, owned? Me? Dozens... Hell, if we want to count the BBS' then... Wow... (I was leet, baby - not just one but TWO 40 MB HDDs, backups AND a spare system.)
I've got an address bar and I know how to use it. Them? They've set it as default and have spent eight hours a day there since they were 14. They've been molded by it and molded it in return. They have a sense of ownership. They have a sense of being.
Really, it's a transient thing (this internet) so they're foolish for doing so but it's how it is - I'm pretty sure.
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I as well. I keep telling them to put on their big cisgendered they pronouned pants and venture out but it's scary.
I still do hang out there. It's not terrible for some things but /r/technology never quite replaced slashdot. Arduino isn't that bad nor is 'askscience' or 'askhistorians' since they're closely watched. But actual discussion is a shit show echo chamber. Watching them try to game Slashdot's moderation (For the Brianna Wu 'AMA') was absolutely hilarious. "I don't understand, why can't I vote up s
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Yeah, I've never actually posted there. There's a KGIII there but they're not me. I have no idea why they use the moniker or who they are but, I assure you, they are not me. They appear to like basketball. I did notice that. (I was curious. They're not the only "kgiii" out there but I've been using the username for 30+ years now.)
Re: Reddit (Score:4, Funny)
Full of whiners, you say.... bwuahahaha. Did you type all that with a straight face?
Odds are he used fingers...
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April fools! (Score:1)
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It was posted yesterday. March 31.
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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 a
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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.
April 1 (Score:1)
Happy Beltaine for all the Wickers and Irish people.
Re:April 1 (Score:4, Informative)
It's April 1st (Score:1)
Re:It's April 1st (Score:5, Informative)
FWIW, the date on TFA is yesterday.
Re:It's April 1st (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's April 1st (Score:4, Funny)
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
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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.
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Only thing I've seen so far is that the scores and user IDs are appearing in binary.
I'm disappointed "scores" wan't translated to "10100s"
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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.
Yes, and thank the FSM for that! Slashdot imitating The Onion for one day per year just meant that I lost one stream of potentially important news for the day.
The timing of Reddit's warrant-canary dying is unfortunate (more than usual). It was reported today, at 4:00 am, not March 31.
I would suggest the timing to be a conspired attempt to keep this out of the news-cycle, but that would be giving the NSA and FISA courts wa-a-a-a-a-ay too much credit for being clever. Or capable of such.
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Most reviews on Slashdot have been highly favorable!
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I don't know, I kept reading about how Luke dies to Rhey, and the Empire finally wins.
Warrant canary (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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You're absolutely correct: the first time a recipient of a National Security Letter can reveal is technically within the allowable classification of 1-1000 NSL requests.
This allowable action does give you a leg to stand on, legally, if the acronym people contest the warrant canary.
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They just need to replace it with "In 2015 we received 1-1000" NSLs. So far in 2016, we have received zero." Drop it down to monthly resolution if needed.
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These people are apparently quite frightening, though, as evidenced by the reditor's reluctance to comment further in the thread.
One thing the reditor would say is that they were dancing on a thin line with the warrant canary, as it was.
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If I ever make a site/business public, I'd have it all automated so the feds are warned: all complaints and notices sent to my business legal addresses are automatically cc'ed to the relevant customers or all customers worldwide as well.
All these companies can legally send relevant correspondence to their customers as well. There is no law that says you can't (corporations are people and the people have a first amendment) and the notice in these letters is like the copyright/privacy notices on bottoms of e-
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Nah, you can see a few of them (redacted, of course) on the 'net. I've seen a few of them pop up online - I'm pretty sure WikiLeaks has a couple of them. If you need me to, I'll go dig them up but Google works for you just as well as it does for me. Search for "released national security letter" or some such. I saw them when folks linked to them.
There are a lot of misleading things said about an NSL. One of them is that an NSL can make them take all sorts of strange actions. No, an NSL is about information
Re:Warrant canary (Score:4, Insightful)
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Something like this on the home page would work:
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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LMFTFY
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 have penthouses for sale in the new Dubai Trump tower, and it's going to be YUGE. Do I write you down for two units?"
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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."
So....you are actually advocating for US intelligence organizations to undertake covert military action on US soil? Of all the times I can think of in recent memory where a government has done this I can't remember it working out too well for the citizens of that country.
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I’ve Abandoned Free Market Principles To Save The Free Market System
So it seems perfectly reasonable. /sarcasm
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Wife's friend is writing a quilt book
There, I gave her Quilting blog a hit.
We're not at war with ISIS... (Score:2)
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?
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Interesting assumption. We don't have an alternate history for comparison. Regardless, even if this is true, it doesn't really change the facts for the USA. The permanent war economy, taking 19 percent of the federal budget each year, is the third largest entitlement program in the USA, and the largest military budget in the world. Remove a third of that money and we still spend more than twice as much as China. Personally, I'd like to have the same kind of social programs that Europe can afford because the
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We (the west) is funding it through our dependence on oil which goes to the ISIS-funding countries. We have in the past funded ISIS/Al-Qaeda directly and we also weaponized Iraq (which most people trained there became ISIS fighter pretty much as soon as the US pulled out).
I guess it's time (Score:4, Insightful)
to go back to Usenet?
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Yes, please. It's dying! :(
The very existance of ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... these "national security letters" is garbage and is a prime example how far into a totalitarian state america has fallen...
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... these "national security letters" is garbage and is a prime example how far into a totalitarian state america has fallen...
The 'Totalitarian' term is a bit strong to be used (just yet).
'Overly authoritarian' is inadequate, though.
It is technically still a 'semi-socialized representative republic', but that is slipping away.
It's slipping closer to 'fascism', but is not there just yet.
Any sociologists want to chime in on the most appropriate term for current-day USA?
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"ridiculous clusterfuck"?
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"ridiculous clusterfuck"?
Amen, brother.
A ridiculosity-clusterfuckosity
Or Ubu Roi (rah!)
If I wanted to undermine canaries... (Score:2)
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.
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I am wondering if a "dead man's toggle" would work for this situation?
Say you post to your blog once a week. You get an NSA letter that "gags" you so you don't post anything that week.
You are not informing anyone, you are just not posting anything for that week. Then, the next week you post again. By this method, one could gather a list of weeks that the system was failed open and thereby determine those weeks that letters were received.
Though, it would be simple enough to change the verbiage of the letter
They can add a new one (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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You'd have to leave out the word "since" because that's fairly explicit in acknowledging that it has happened in the past on a specific date. Instead, you'd have to do a date range - "Reddit has not received any requests from these government agencies in Q2 2016" or next year " "Reddit has not received any requests from these government agencies in 2017..."
Date (Score:2)
They are truly idiotic for releasing this on April first, if they want people to take them seriously.
Warrant Canary encoding reductio ad absurdum (Score:2)
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
Re:Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 i
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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.
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A notification is a notification, regardless of how you dress it up.
Re:Legality (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Have those laws survived court challenge?
Re:Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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I let you figure out which is which. Consider also the phrase "No comment" in response to certain pointed kinds of questions.
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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.
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To prosecute someone for it, you'd have to acknowledge the NSL yourself. And why would they do that?
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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.
Re:Legality (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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 o
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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/... [eff.org]
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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.
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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.
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Pretty sure that's what Apple was fighting.
A court order that said they had to say something (in software).
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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.
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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 y
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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".
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I don't even HAVE a Reddit account but even I know about this:
http://nullprogram.com/am-i-sh... [nullprogram.com]
In fact, it is in my favorites (for some reason?). No, I have no idea why that is. I don't recall putting it in my favorites but I started typing shadowbanned and that appeared in my address bar - I was just gonna go find it again for you guys.
I've never even posted to Reddit, in my life. There is, technically, a KGIII there. I looked. They're into basketball. They also write like a normal person. No, I have no id
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If It's really "contempt of court" then I'd love someone to point at exactly which court we're talking about, since the whole point of NSLs is to deny due process by not having a court.
I don't deny that the government would try to fuck someone up, but surely they'd call it something else.
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What makes the assclowns "liberal" if they demand conformity and group think?
Its more of a moderate circle jerk.