thoughts/post/2016-04-02-reddit-suspected...

# Reddit suspected to have been served with an NSL

It is suspected that Reddit has been [served with an NSL][schneier].
[National Security Letters (NSLs)][nsl] are subpoena served by the United
States federal government and often come with a gag order that prevents the
recipient from even stating that they received the letter.

[schneier]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/04/reddits_warrant.html
[nsl]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter

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[Warrant canaries][canary] are used to circumvent gag orders by stating
that requests have *not* been received, under the [legal theory][court]
that, while courts can compel persons not to speak, they can't compel them
to lie.  [Reddit's canary has died][reddit-report]---the canary is absent
from their most recent 2015 transparency report, where it was [present in
the 2014 report][reddit-report-2014].

Does this mean that you should stop using Reddit?  No; canaries are an
important transparency method.  If you are worried about your privacy, you
shouldn't disclose the information to a third party to begin with.  Note
that this includes metadata that are gathered about you when you, for
example, browse subreddits while logged in.  You can help mitigate that by
[browsing anonymously using Tor][donot], being sure never to log in during
the same session.

The website [Canary Watch][cw] is a website that tracks warrant canaries.

I'm awaiting further analysis after the weekend.

[canary]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
[cw]: https://www.canarywatch.org/
[court]: https://gigaom.com/2014/10/10/are-warrant-canaries-legal-twitter-wants-to-save-techs-warning-signal-of-government-spying/
[reddit-report]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160331210850/https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2015
[reddit-report-2014]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160331204815/https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2014
[donot]: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/DoNot
Convert posts to markdown files This was considerable effort, and took a bit more time than I had hoped. While newer posts were written with Markdown, previous ones were writen with my own Markdown-like formatting, but they had enough differences that it was quite an effort to get things updated. I also checked the HTML output of each, though I didn't read every article in detail. Some of these were more substantial than others; National Uproar, for example. These conversions were markup translations: the actual text remains unchanged, except in one minor instance to add text for the sake of providing some text to hold a link to a quote. Any changes to post text will happen in future commits so that the diffs are clearly visible. 2018-12-17 23:31:08 -05:00			`# Reddit suspected to have been served with an NSL`

			`It is suspected that Reddit has been [served with an NSL][schneier].`
			`[National Security Letters (NSLs)][nsl] are subpoena served by the United`
			`States federal government and often come with a gag order that prevents the`
			`recipient from even stating that they received the letter.`

			`[schneier]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/04/reddits_warrant.html`
			`[nsl]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Letter`

			`<!-- more -->`

			`[Warrant canaries][canary] are used to circumvent gag orders by stating`
			`that requests have not been received, under the [legal theory][court]`
			`that, while courts can compel persons not to speak, they can't compel them`
			`to lie. [Reddit's canary has died][reddit-report]---the canary is absent`
			`from their most recent 2015 transparency report, where it was [present in`
			`the 2014 report][reddit-report-2014].`

			`Does this mean that you should stop using Reddit? No; canaries are an`
			`important transparency method. If you are worried about your privacy, you`
			`shouldn't disclose the information to a third party to begin with. Note`
			`that this includes metadata that are gathered about you when you, for`
			`example, browse subreddits while logged in. You can help mitigate that by`
			`[browsing anonymously using Tor][donot], being sure never to log in during`
			`the same session.`

			`The website [Canary Watch][cw] is a website that tracks warrant canaries.`

			`I'm awaiting further analysis after the weekend.`

			`[canary]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary`
			`[cw]: https://www.canarywatch.org/`
			`[court]: https://gigaom.com/2014/10/10/are-warrant-canaries-legal-twitter-wants-to-save-techs-warning-signal-of-government-spying/`
			`[reddit-report]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160331210850/https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2015`
			`[reddit-report-2014]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160331204815/https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2014`
			`[donot]: https://www.whonix.org/wiki/DoNot`