The Warrant Canary in the Content Mines

April 1, 2016 7:46 PM

Reddit has removed its warrant canary. One might take that to mean they've been subpoenaed.

I'd be remiss in failing to mention jessamyn's role in developing and popularizing the warrant canary in the first place.

posted by chesty_a_arthur (57 comments total)

Boing Boing article from yesterday: “Reddit's Warrant Canary just died”
posted by Going To Maine at 7:50 PM on April 1, 2016

The thing I've never understood about warrant canaries is: now what? What can I do with this information?
posted by mhoye at 7:52 PM on April 1, 2016 [6 favorites]

Who could have predicted this?
posted by Going To Maine at 7:54 PM on April 1, 2016

Reddit's Warrant Canary just died ... on the day before April Fool's day. But there's an interesting thread with periodic participation from someone who appears to be Official Reddit.

(Where's the MeFi warrant canary?)
posted by spacewrench at 8:00 PM on April 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

"I've been advised not to say anything one way or the other," a reddit administrator named "spez," who made the update, said in a thread discussing the change. “Even with the canaries, we're treading a fine line.”

"Recipients of NSLs are subject to a gag order that forbids them from ever revealing the letters' existence to their coworkers to their friends or even to their family members much less the public."
posted by homunculus at 8:04 PM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's a legal way of saying a place is no longer safe. Even if it's only spreading awareness, the warrant canary makes explicate the cost. The chilling effect of total survellance is very real. It's why I'm hesitant to open up in digital spaces. Online presence is only a marketing persona. We are all brands here.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 8:04 PM on April 1, 2016 [31 favorites]

The user "spez" is Steve Huffman, Reddit's current CEO, for reference purposes.
posted by Sequence at 8:04 PM on April 1, 2016 [7 favorites]

The thing I've never understood about warrant canaries is: now what? What can I do with this information?

If a canary dies in the coal mine you should probably get the hell out of there.
posted by Bistle at 8:05 PM on April 1, 2016 [39 favorites]

If a canary dies in the coal mine you should probably get the hell out of there.

What were you doing in Reddit in the first place
posted by beerperson at 8:09 PM on April 1, 2016 [57 favorites]

The thing I've never understood about warrant canaries is: now what? What can I do with this information?

Go elsewhere. In the original Library context, this was apocalyptic - the FBI was trolling through who checked out what book for god only knows what reason. They can and will wreck your day because they decide they want to - ask MLK.

In terms of Reddit? OpSec. Burner email account (NOT google, FFS... ) to reg a random account. Let it die as it accumulates Karma...

Because, let's be real. If you are a Reddit celebrity, with God's Own Karma, guess what? You are Tool No. 1 for the Feds.

The flip side to that is do not trust any celebrity Redditor. They have been blackmailed or simply sidelined and their account co-opted.

It's gonna come here, one day, and then I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Still ain't gonna vote Trump. No regrets.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:11 PM on April 1, 2016 [15 favorites]

Spacewrench, I was thinking the same thing about Mefi...
posted by Jubey at 8:11 PM on April 1, 2016

What were you doing in Reddit in the first place
Hunting canaries.
posted by Bistle at 8:14 PM on April 1, 2016 [6 favorites]

WHERE'S OUR CANARY?
/starts looking for any user that incorporates sylvester in the user name.

But seriously, does metafilter have one?
posted by ashbury at 8:18 PM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

Thanks, Obama.
posted by eriko at 8:20 PM on April 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

If metafilter does not post one, are we being monitored?
posted by prambutan at 8:22 PM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

THE FBI IS POOPYHEADS

i'll let you guys know what happens
posted by beerperson at 8:24 PM on April 1, 2016 [11 favorites]

The unbelievable thing is that this hadn't happened before.
posted by dilaudid at 8:36 PM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

All those "there is no cabal" jokes are getting less and less amusing.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:41 PM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

all your cabal are belong to us
posted by ashbury at 8:43 PM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is not my beautiful cabal!
posted by eriko at 8:47 PM on April 1, 2016 [14 favorites]

WORST SURVEILLANCE STATE EVER.
posted by sylvanshine at 8:48 PM on April 1, 2016 [8 favorites]

BEST SURVEILLANCE STATE EVER.
KEEPING YOU AND ME SAFE FROM ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC!

I SUPPORT THE ACTIONS OF THESE OUR MEN AND WOMEN ON THE FRONT LINES!

Why do you hate freedom?
posted by Mezentian at 9:07 PM on April 1, 2016 [9 favorites]

My money's on the hilariously benzoed out people who run their Xanax distribution business on a closed subreddit.

I'd like to believe that's all they're after, but let's be real. If you're a government agency with access to everything but no real restrictions (and can fit the data into those restrictions after the fact when trial time comes), why wouldn't you just hoover up everything? They probably backup all of Reddit everyday. And pull it out when it's useful. The law doesn't actually matter. That's for the courts to deal with.
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:09 PM on April 1, 2016 [6 favorites]

WIRED: “Reddit Hints—Without Saying Anything—That It Got a National Security Letter”

The flip side to that is do not trust any celebrity Redditor. They have been blackmailed or simply sidelined and their account co-opted.

IThe security letter means that the FBI has requested some kind of confidential information about users that reddit might possess: “Who’s this Redditor we can’t identify? What’s going on in this closed forum?”

A “celebrity redditor” is presumably someone with a very established persona on the site. There’s nothing there to be co-opted. If you’re assuming ill-will or manipulation, it would be more of the form “Does Famous Person have a secret Reddit account they use to buy drugs?”
posted by Going To Maine at 9:09 PM on April 1, 2016 [6 favorites]

They probably backup all of Reddit everyday. And pull it out when it's useful. The law doesn't actually matter. That's for the courts to deal with.

Since Reddit’s data is public, the courts wouldn’t care. Universities hoover up all of Reddit every day.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:10 PM on April 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

(To be clear, I mention universities not because I consider them super dangerous but because the idea of scraping up all of Reddit is banal.)
posted by Going To Maine at 9:15 PM on April 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Still ain't gonna vote Trump. No regrets

No way this would be an even feeble excuse to vote Trump. If he ends up in the White House, he's most likely to order many more NSLs and have all the most salacious results forwarded to him daily, just for his entertainment.

And in case he does win, Hi, Don, you sh!thead.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:59 PM on April 1, 2016 [5 favorites]

"[There is nothing to see here, please move along]"

-Idiom that obfusicates some people, some of the time, circa, 1803.
posted by clavdivs at 10:05 PM on April 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

No way this would be an even feeble excuse to vote Trump. If he ends up in the White House, he's most likely to order many more NSLs and have all the most salacious results forwarded to him daily, just for his entertainment.

That's the point. He is a literal living embodiment of Roko's Basilisk. He will have the Big Data analytics and complete intercept of all civilian communications going back a decade or more to figure out who his every enemy is or was, and use the power of the state against them.

Let this sink in a moment. We live in a moment in time where Roko's Basilisk is not an impossible thought experiment.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:06 PM on April 1, 2016 [7 favorites]

He will have the Big Data analytics and complete intercept of all civilian communications going back a decade or more to figure out who his every enemy is or was, and use the power of the state against them.

Trump disgusts me too, but whoever is in the White House will have that, from Obama forward. Not to mention whoever's got the right connections at the NSA, FBI, CIA, Google, DIA, DHS, DEA, Apple, Facebook, GCHQ, MI6, Shin Bet, OSI, your local neighborhood fusion center...

I guess smile when asked to and hope they keep infighting enough to give at least some of us room to breathe?
posted by 3urypteris at 10:47 PM on April 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

What were you doing in Reddit in the first place

No Star Wars trading card thread here.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by dorkydancer at 11:34 PM on April 1, 2016 [10 favorites]

So basically the government got a warrant for information on at least one of Reddit's 200 million active users?
posted by mark k at 12:20 AM on April 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

The thing I've never understood about warrant canaries is: now what? What can I do with this information?

Well, if you're posting "creepshots", trading drugs, harassing women, planning to assassinate a president, or distributing malware, you should stop. So many dumb things done on reddit with the pseudonymity that can be pierced with a warrant asking for all identifying information, including IP address, email, browser strings, etc. It's really a surprise it took this long.

And if you're Assange, Applebaum, Snowden, Nakamura or some other high profile Enemy of the State, maybe don't stop posting on reddit too.
posted by pwnguin at 12:23 AM on April 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

One might take that to mean they've been subpoenaed.

Secret-subpoenaed. Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle is the rare exception of someone who can actually talk about receiving one of these National Security Letters (given that he counter-sued, and won).


(Where's the MeFi warrant canary?)
But seriously, does metafilter have one?
If metafilter does not post one, are we being monitored?


This has been brought up before; here's cortex' answer back then:

As far as I know, we have not.

And as maddeningly stupid as this security state stuff is, it sort of puts us in a shitty position to make a "okay, winking's illegal but how about I ask you really, really publicly if you've got something in your eye" entreaty and then leave it up to us to decide just how to blink so that nobody gets the wrong idea.

and jessamyn's:

If we have, mathowie has never told any of the rest of us. That is the truth.

mathowie's own reply was on par with Kahle's signal to his family the day he received his:

That night and over dinner with my family I said, “Ask me what it was I did today, and remember my answer.” So my son, who was, I don’t know, nine, or something like that, asked me, “Daddy, what did you do today?” And I said, “I can’t tell you.” That was the only thing I said, and then months and months and months went by.


In answer to a MeFite's renewed question on the issue a few months later, jessamyn expounded a little on the issue as pertains to MeFi:

In spite of this, Metafilter does not have a warrant canary, nor does it protect user data via limited data retention.
posted by anemone of the state at 7:42 AM on November 8, 2013 [+] [!]


We do and we don't. We toss out a lot of our logfiles after very little time. We save IP and Paypal addresses. We're clear and communicative about what we do and do not save and what we do and do not share under which circumstances. I would find a way to tell people if we got a warrant. I do not believe in the gag order (that said, Matt might be smart to not tell me). People who sign up here by sending $5 in the mail and coming through a proxy are basically anonymous to us if they do not share their personal information. You can grump about the site all you want, but we work pretty hard on maintaining integrity.

[My bold.]
posted by progosk at 12:26 AM on April 2, 2016 [22 favorites]

What were you doing in Reddit in the first place

What are you, a narc? If you're a narc you have to say if anyone asks.
posted by juv3nal at 1:02 AM on April 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

mhoye: "The thing I've never understood about warrant canaries is: now what? What can I do with this information?"

With Reddit I can't see it being all that useful as I would have assumed the feds already were reading everything one did there. But if it was say your encryption provider you'd want to look at a different provider. It was widely speculated that a secret warrant lead to the withdrawal of TrueCrypt for example.
posted by Mitheral at 1:52 AM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

What were you doing in Reddit in the first place

Can we please have a single post about Reddit without karmafavoritewhoring derails like this? They add nothing other than a sense of smug satisfaction and regardless of Reddit's merits or lack thereof, one of the biggest sites on the internet actually using the canary is worth discussion.
posted by Candleman at 1:57 AM on April 2, 2016 [58 favorites]

Greg_Ace: "All those "there is no cabal" jokes are getting less and less amusing."

Especially considering Metafilter has an explicit Cabal: Cortex.
posted by Mitheral at 2:48 AM on April 2, 2016

mhoye: "The thing I've never understood about warrant canaries is: now what? What can I do with this information?"

Bruce Schneier's current thought on this very point: "I can't think of anything."
posted by progosk at 3:13 AM on April 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

So basically the government got a warrant for information on at least one of Reddit's 200 million active users?

Minus the warrant.
posted by teh_boy at 4:15 AM on April 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

If you're a government agency with access to everything but no real restrictions (and can fit the data into those restrictions after the fact when trial time comes), why wouldn't you just hoover up everything? They probably backup all of Reddit everyday. And pull it out when it's useful.

I'm sure they have been hoovering up the public stuff from day one (and hence have the world's most complete collection of amateur porn, creepshots, and angry political discussions), but the more critical access would probably be to the back-end stuff that would allow you to tie Reddit activity to to activity on other networks, say. I've always just assumed that the NSA et al already have that kind of access, but these kinds of official requests might suggest that their current access isn't quite so total.

These odd, intermittent moments where the limitations of the security state come out into the open (like with the recent back and forth over access to the iphone) are interesting, since so much of it is always kept out of sight and unknown.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:37 AM on April 2, 2016

It's technically illegal to admit that you've received a national security letter, right? But it's not illegal to *claim* you've received one if you haven't. So therefore, there's only one condition under which I could legally assert this:

I have received a national security letter which bars me from admitting that I have received it.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:28 AM on April 2, 2016 [18 favorites]

but these kinds of official requests might suggest that their current access isn't quite so total.

I always figured that it was on a warrant-like basis: they got what they came for last time, and since then *gasp* the internet has changed!!!: Front-ends and back-ends, differing types of encryption (they're mostly all breakable, but not all in the same way), users that pick up and lay down identities, and of course, novel methods of obfuscation (crypto via packet radio kex*, etc). So, with all this, they have to go back in each and every time to refine methods to get the actual data that they need, which is a yuuuge expenditure of time and effort on their part, but honestly, the Internet is largely an organic thing now: if you're going try to be 3rd-person-omniscient, it's going to take some effort. You can hoover up data all you want, but it's becoming increasingly clear that too much data is almost as big a problem as too little.
posted by eclectist at 7:12 AM on April 2, 2016

But it's not illegal to *claim* you've received one if you haven't.

As long as you're not a journalist (or blogger) in Australia, apparently.
posted by progosk at 9:19 AM on April 2, 2016

I love the canary warrant as a concept—as something that represents a way of drawing a last-ditch line in the sand in the face of an encroaching surveillance state and tells everybody to grab their bug-out bag and hit the bricks—but, yeah, once you're talking casually and openly about the mechanics of a Magical Anti-Government Loophole you kind of have to be realistic about how durable that magic is going to be when tested.

In practice I think that as an idea in the popular imagination, the main utility of the canary warrant isn't as a canary but rather a kind of sword of Damocles: if you're in danger from a potential compromise in data security, you've been in danger the whole time, and it's more useful to think about it ahead of time and modify your security strategy proactively than to react once the shit's already hit the fan. When the canary dies, you can run out the mine; when the sword drops, its too late. Unless the organization with the canary warrant is guaranteed to aggressively nuke the entirety of their data store (servers, backups, caches, physical drives all of that lives on, etc) at the first sign of trouble, it's not much use knowing the canary died: you aren't going to be able to carry anything out of the mine with you anyway.
posted by cortex at 11:16 AM on April 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

The thing I've never understood about warrant canaries is: now what? What can I do with this information?

There hasn't been this much discussion about NSLs in quite a long time now. The only way to get rid of cockroaches is to expose them to light, so we need MORE news items about disappearing canaries.

And that concludes our news on canaries. And now, the news for budgies. No budgies were harmed in M5 motorway accident this morning but traffic was ...
posted by DreamerFi at 12:16 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

So basically the government got a warrant for information on at least one of Reddit's 200 million active users?

Yep, and personally I find this an incredibly cheering piece of news.

Reddit's canary was in place for TEN YEARS. With all the crap on Reddit -- all the hate groups, all the secret codes by Islamic Terrorists (or not), all the little subreddits that fell in and out of favor, after ten years they got their first subpoena.

If this information leads you to believe that you live in a surveillance state then you are way the hell off in the weeds.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:38 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Reddit has been subject to numerous court orders in the last year as shown by their transparency report. A national security letter is different.
posted by humanfont at 1:43 PM on April 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

And to continue because I hit post by mistake.

The difference is that a national security letter is issued directly by the government with no prior judicial oversight. You may not disclose that you have been subject to the order, nor the contents of the order. You may challenge it in court, but it is very difficult.
posted by humanfont at 1:47 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

The reason that the so-called "canary" exists is that the law prohibits recipients of certain search warrants from revealing to anyone that they have been served, in violation of the First Amendment. We need a little civil disobedience, folks. You can't challenge an illegal law if you don't violate it.
posted by megatherium at 1:58 PM on April 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

If this information leads you to believe that you live in a surveillance state then you are way the hell off in the weeds.

Reddit may have received numerous subpeonas and been subject to numerous court orders in the last decade. A national security letter is different. The difference is that a national security letter is issued directly by the government with no prior judicial oversight. You may not disclose that you have been subject to the order, nor the contents of the order. You may challenge it in court, but it is very difficult.

The Brewster Kahle / Archive.org story mentioned above is a better example of the problems with the NSL: when Kahle took them to court, the FBI quickly withdrew the letter and ended their request. This would seem to imply that the particular agents involved didn’t care enough about the potential results to pursue the case. (I am neither a lawyer nor an FBI agent.) In other words: a very casual use of a very powerful tool.

Large web forums that allow/afford interaction are a bad exemplar of the problems with the NSL: you could be using Reddit to overtly talk about a lot of dangerous things, and many folks -myself incuded- would be glad that the FBI is concerned about that. If someone on Reddit is telling people how to get access to illegal weapons (or to find other people who have access to illegal weapons), it’s hard to gin up a lot of sympathy for the victims. On the other hand, imagine if Ravelry had a warrant canary that died? That would raise a heck of a lot of questions about what the FBI is spending its time doing, and whether we really want to trust it with this power.

To me, the only thing the warrant canary death does is provide another signal that Reddit has hit the big leagues. People talk about a lot of bad stuff on Reddit, and the authorities are noticing. That doesn’t make NSLs good things, but it doesn’t say much about their issues.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:08 PM on April 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

On the other hand, imagine if Ravelry had a warrant canary that died?

If anyone knows where there's a warrant canary on Ravelry, feel free to point it out. JUST SAYING.
posted by juv3nal at 2:37 PM on April 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

Reddit has launched "robin" which is theorized to perhaps be a way to chaff whatever user data the national security letter is demanding. https://www.reddit.com/r/joinrobin/comments/4d0iip/robin_is_a_way_for_reddit_to_create_a_massive/
posted by joeyh at 8:09 PM on April 2, 2016

to elaborate, there is a history of knitting being used for steganographic purposes.
posted by juv3nal at 8:34 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I feel like pwnguin nailed it about the dodgy subreddits. All those onion addresses of illegal services plus helpful threads about any kind of cybercrime imaginable.
posted by yoHighness at 3:37 AM on April 3, 2016

MeFi should have had a warrant canary years ago, cortex.
posted by mediareport at 8:26 AM on April 3, 2016

Not necessary. The Cabal isn't subject to NSLs.


there is no Cabal
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:54 AM on April 3, 2016