Riseup hasn't updated their Warrant Canary since August 16. This is unusual and raised some speculation that they have received a court order and/or a gag order. With some cryptic tweets they try to calm down their fans. We'll see what will come of it.
Yes, it's disturbing I've migrated some of my conversations. But hey, it's prudent to assume that adversaries see all data and metadata. So you encrypt, and use good persona OpSec.
Those tweets are awfully curious... As for the canary, it says they intend to update approximately once per quarter; perhaps the month's end will bring some better news? That said, how useful is a "warrant canary" anyway? It hardly seems like a solution with any teeth to me - if a court order can force site admins to render their equipment and shut down then they probably have the power to force a page to be updated as well. Thoughts?
I've always thought that warrant canaries would be vulnerable to the judicial process. Usually judges have wide powers to ensure that their intent gets obeyed. I know there are some protections about compelled speech, yet I think they'd be able to make most organisations comply in practice.
"They" have everything. The more you try to hide it the higher up on the list you are. Innocuous content or not.
Dangerous rhetoric there. Consider that a massive state surveillance apparatus is only one facet of the threat faced by activists, journalists and the average citizen - don't let one particularly daunting threat allow you to become complacent enough that you leave room for other attackers to step in as well. It's a slippery slope.
Well, they say that LEA can always find something illegal. So maybe they offer a plea bargain, which just happens to include silently updating that canary
Not only that - constitutional protections and rights frequently take years to assert themselves, by which point you're out of business and have been rotting in jail for that time. The law is asymmetrical. Your call....
The Intercept (Micah Lee) is reporting information on Riseup & the canary issue. Nominally, Riseup are launching a new feature called personally encrypted storage in December, open source, which should reduce the amount of exposure they will have to orders.
Last time they updated a day after someone notified them on twitter. Right now, they are not updating even after a month passed. Coupled with the Leonard Cohen quote on twitter, it seems compromised. They acknowledged the delay but not yet fixing this sure seems pretty strange. They used to be wikileak's email provider. Maybe that has something to do with it.
