
Reddit removed NSL canary from 2015 Transparency Report - yk
https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4cqyia/for_your_reading_pleasure_our_2015_transparency/
======
rsync
This reminds me ... the rsync.net warrant canary[1][2] is ten years old this
month.

I was hoping that it would be irrelevant after all of these years...

[1]
[https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt](https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary#Usage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary#Usage)

~~~
cyphar
I didn't know Australia outlawed warrant canaries. Luckily, it looks like that
actually only outlawed journalist warrant canaries (so a company couldn't use
a warrant canary to say that a journalist was investigating one of their
customers).

~~~
Myrmornis
I gather from stuff like the quote on Wikipedia pasted below that there is
doubt about the protection from prosecution that canaries give you. But I'm
finding that hard to believe. What about if it's literally a picture of a
canary you remove, rather than any actual sentences, and you don't say
anything about it? Or you change it to a cardinal (red) one day? Or you give a
string of 1s and 0s with the understanding that the proportion of 1s should be
interpreted as the probability that you've been subpoenad? Would the court's
decision depend on the belief in the general population about the semantics of
the page decorations?

    
    
      Bruce Schneier wrote in a blog post that "[p]ersonally,
      I have never believed [warrant canaries] would work. It
      relies on the fact that a prohibition against speaking
      doesn't prevent someone from not speaking. But courts
      generally aren't impressed by this sort of thing

~~~
gefh
The SEC doesn't mind if you cancel a planned stock sale as an insider - 'no
insider trading without a trade'. It's an entirely plausible that there's "no
speaking about a gag order without speaking".

~~~
socket0
Courts (especially in the US) have been known to equate all kinds of things
with speech, so it's not unthinkable to equate the symbolic act of NOT doing
something with a form of speech. Not standing for the the national anthem or
Pledge of Allegiance, for example. So in THEORY a court could rule that the
act of not doing something you might be expected to do, such as include a
warrant canary, is still a form of speech, and in doing so you are violating
your gag order.

Still, all theoretical and purely speculation, because as far as I know this
has never been tested in court.

~~~
rubyfan
Part of the Apple all writs defense was the government can't force you to
speak as it is a violation of the first amendment.

I do agree with the quotation though. I have a hard time believing government
wouldn't somehow figure out a secret way to violate your first amendment such
that you have no legal recourse.

------
gizmo385
Yishan just posted this a followup that I think is quite interesting[1].

Excerpt: "If you get an NSL, you're gagged. You can't talk about it. I can say
that during my time we did not receive any National Security Letters. /r/ekjp
was able to say in her Transparency Report for 2014 that they never got any.
Apparently in this 2015 report they are not saying that."

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/yishan/comments/4cub02/transparency...](https://www.reddit.com/r/yishan/comments/4cub02/transparency_reports_and_subpoenas_eli5/)

------
hardlianotion
I am interested in what Yishan has to say about Amazon AWS

[https://www.reddit.com/r/yishan/comments/4cub02/transparency...](https://www.reddit.com/r/yishan/comments/4cub02/transparency_reports_and_subpoenas_eli5/)

Does that inform anyone's choice of cloud infrastructure?

~~~
regularfry
Until we get workable homomorphic encryption, the bit about encrypted machine
images is (charitably) optimistic. I wrote about this a year ago:
[http://blackkettle.org/blog/2015/02/19/youve-got-to-trust-
yo...](http://blackkettle.org/blog/2015/02/19/youve-got-to-trust-your-vm-
host/)

~~~
anonymousDan
Unless you're willing to trust the hardware manufacturer, at which point
something like Intel SGX could be a runner.

~~~
regularfry
You also have to trust your VM host not to provide an emulated SGX (which is
what [https://github.com/sslab-gatech/opensgx](https://github.com/sslab-
gatech/opensgx) is, unless I'm very much mistaken).

~~~
anonymousDan
I think you're mistaken. Intel provides infrastructure to ensure you're
talking to an enclave running on an actual Intel machine, and you can then do
a remote attestation to verify the contents of that enclave.

------
jat850
Based on spez's language, is it safe to assume that a NSL has indeed been
received? That's my interpretation (and it seems that of other reddit
commentors too).

~~~
jessaustin
Any other interpretation would call into serious question the entire concept
of canaries.

~~~
jat850
I agree. One commentor suggested that they could have voluntarily removed it
for some other unrelated reason, but then they would have no reason to not say
exactly that - which they aren't. Seems to leave only one reason why they did.

~~~
vacri
So, one disadvantage of these loophole canaries is that they only work once.
What happens when another NSL is issued at a later date?

~~~
rdtsc
Moreover. The state, as an actor, should simply generate constant stream of
NSL requests to trip as many canaries as possible. They have the time and
resources. This would basically nullify the effectiveness of canaries as a
concept.

"Hey George, did you hear Reddit has a canary now too. Ok, add it to the list.
Pick a user there and issue an NSL. And don't forget about Google and FB this
month as well, they are about to reset theirs".

Putting oneself in the shoes of such an actor this is a rational approach to
take.

~~~
nroach
In theory, a NSL still requires a good faith belief by the issuing agency that
the recipient possesses information relevant to a national security matter.
That's not to say agencies couldn't use them maliciously, but it would require
implying deliberate malice or deception on the part of the human agent who
decided to issue the fraudulent NSL. Then again, any organization over a
certain size is likely to have some conversation in their records that could
be deemed nominally relevant.

~~~
rdtsc
> would require implying deliberate malice or deception on the part of the
> human agent who decided to issue the fraudulent NSL

Can be done by re-interpreting what is happening -- "we are not issuing bogus
NSLs to troll them, we are fighting terrorism and these sites deliberately
shelter and protect terrorists and other criminals. We want to periodically
issue NSLs to establish protocols and methods so we can more effectively
protect our country and do our work".

So it has to be story which will look good on paper and workers will tell
themselves without feeling like they are doing something illegal.

Another way is to do it as a side-effect of something else -- say "we decided
to double our efforts to track down drug dealers on these sites, therefore
we'll put 2x more people on it and they will conduct research and open new
cases and so on". So simply by allocating more resources to the "problem"
they'll ensure any of these large sites will simply get a constant stream of
NSLs without explictly writing that down as "we are busting the canaries" as a
goal anywhere.

------
shalmanese
Is this the first warrant canary that we have a reasonably high degree of
certainty was actually tripped? I remember a couple of other warrant canary
cases that could be more parsimoniously attributed to user error but none this
clearcut.

Any other warrant canaries trip before?

~~~
jat850
According to Wikipedia, Apple's warrant canary was removed in the July-
December 2013 transparency report (and remained absent in the following
transparency report in 2014).

~~~
alanfalcon
They now report on the number of such requests they receive using a banding
system, right? They can say they received between 0-249 such requests this
year, something (essentially useless) like that?

------
wesleyd
\- Have you been served an NSL? \- No, I have not. \- Have you been served an
NSL? \- No, I have not. \- Have you been served an NSL? \- On the advice of
counsel, I decline to answer.

~~~
6stringmerc
This sounds like the most logical explanation and basic legal standing of the
situation. Not saying what has been said in the past is as clear an indicator
as possible, given the circumstances.

------
dfc
I have never understood what value I personally would derive from a warrant
canary. For the sake of discussion let's assume that reddit's warrant canary
was intentionally removed and but for an NSL it would have continued to appear
on reddit. How do my actions differ in this universe compared to one where the
canary was present in the report?

~~~
shostack
Here's an example.

Let's say you frequent lots of subreddits that might be considered outside
societal norms. Right now that data is ONLY available internally at Reddit.

If the NSA hoovered up this data, suddenly they might learn a lot about you
that they didn't know before (although there's probably a fair argument that
people probably leave enough other clues scattered across other data sources
they likely have access to that make this redundant).

Maybe you aren't looking at things that would set off their alerts for today's
hot media topics. But what about the future? What if we end up with a
President with a radical discriminatory agenda (a scarily likely possibility
at this point unfortunately)? What if suddenly things that may have been
frowned upon before by the general public are suddenly made illegal by
Executive order or some other horrible twisting of our laws? This provides the
government with a great way to narrow down the list and identify targets that
have become "inconvenient" for them.

Think it can't happen or that this is an off-the-wall conspiracy theory?
Germany and Russia would like to have a chat with you.

Sure, the mainstream users probably won't have any noticeable impact on their
lives. For now at least. But this can still have a chilling effect on free
speech today, without the nightmare scenario I outlined above occurring.

Case in point from a couple days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11374839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11374839)

~~~
arghimonmobile
Firstly, I completely agree with you regarding why this is bad news. However,
I don't understand one thing: let's say our hypothetical user has been posting
in a private subreddit for carrot fetishists, which Trump will make illegal in
2018. If, today, a NSL was received by Reddit, isn't it potentially already
too late for our carrot fetishist, even if they immediately stop visiting the
subreddit or delete their account? Now, the carrot lover knows there was a
NSL, but there isn't anything they can do except wait and see what happens
when the new legislation rolls around in 2018. Emigrate, maybe? Serious
question; I don't know how these things work. Asking for a friend.

~~~
jonas21
It wouldn't matter. The US constitution prohibits laws that criminalize
earlier actions that were legal when committed.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law)

~~~
cyphar
Recall the Communist witch-hunt in the cold war. That was done without
retroactive policing and parallel construction. Just because they cannot
imprison you for actions taken before the action was illegal doesn't mean they
can't fuck you over in other ways. It's the thought police all over again.

------
coldcode
Someday someone will get an NSL, say screw it, publish it on the internet
(with mirrors) and tell the government screw you I now have standing.

~~~
hellbanTHIS
Surprised it hasn't happened yet, not sure what the penalty would be but I'd
guess months rather than years.

~~~
cthor
The government would very much want to make an example of anyone who did that.
The punishment would be as severe as they could get away with.

~~~
meric
Wait till they're sending so many of these out one day a person with nothing
to lose receives one.

~~~
ep103
Its happened a times IIRC. The government always drops the NSL, then throws
the book at the person.

------
acqq
How the canary looked like in the 2014 report:

[https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2014#wiki_national_...](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2014#wiki_national_security_requests)

The 2015 report:

[https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2015](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/transparency/2015)

------
sloppycee
What terrifies me is not the potential data leak, but that the NSA may be
obtaining their TLS certificates, bypassing the threat (to them) of "https
everywhere".

~~~
sievebrain
Certificates are public, the NSA can just download them.

You mean private keys. Reddit uses forward secure TLS, so obtaining the
private keys does not allow the NSA to decrypt the traffic, as fresh keys are
negotiated on each connection. The long term private key is used only for
identification, so they allow you to impersonate the server but as far as I'm
aware, nobody has yet seen evidence of a large, popular website having all of
its traffic hijacked by state actors with stolen SSL keys. I can only imagine
that such an attack would be quite visible (unless the taps were done
internally inside a big CDN).

~~~
chippy
According to the Snowden documents, traffic is hijacked in a targeted manner.
So, for example, only on pages served to the designated user, IP address or IP
blocks etc. We would not see all it's traffic altered, we would only see
traffic being altered if we were being directly targeted. It would be
incredibly hard to see by others.

Also, the SSL keys are not stolen, we have to assume that they have been given
to them based on the letter. The gag order and canary indicated that
everything has been compromised.

~~~
sievebrain
Doing that requires you to be able to see through at least some connections in
the first place, in order to figure out which connections are from your target
victim. That's why QUANTUM is a combination of packet sniffing and packet
injection. If everything is SSLd then it's much harder to deal with cases
where a users connection moves around.

~~~
chippy
I'm not familiar with reddit's set up. But given that a NSL means that
anything and everything can be given over to the NSA by reddit, does this mean
that it's not hard for them to do this now?

~~~
sievebrain
Only if they were able to get a direct tap of all traffic entering Reddit's
servers inside AWS. Then SSL is irrelevant of course. Doesn't matter what keys
or crypto you use.

If it's not a direct real-time feed then, no, doesn't really change much.

------
zmmmmm
It's amazing that it lasted this long. Given how I assumed the government was
handing these things out like candy I would have thought just about every
major tech organisation was getting dozens at least every year. In a weird
way, it almost increases my faith in the system. Or it decreases my faith even
further in the competence of the security agencies .. I'm not sure which.
(after Facebook and Google, Reddit is probably one of the most obvious and
valuable places to hit they could go to ... how did it take them this long?).

~~~
patrickmclaren
Keep in mind that canaries do not preclude false negatives, especially in
larger organizations.

------
brians
The only plausible NSL served on Reddit is for subscriber information related
to a national security investigation. Reddit was compelled to provide the
records they already had on some username's real name, billing details, and
similar---and maybe a list of who they exchanged messages with.

~~~
chrissnell
There are a number of English-speaking, self-identifying ISIS members who post
regularly in /r/JihadInFocus. /u/thelord4444 is one and /u/AnsarAlKhilafah is
another. I wouldn't be the least surprised to find out it was about them.

------
arca_vorago
This reminds me of when people asked Linus Torvalds if the NSA had approached
him about putting in backdoors. To which he answered "No" while shaking his
head yes...

Red Hat and Systemd anyone?

------
shostack
This is incredibly disheartening to hear, but I have to say I'm glad to see
the currently top-voted comment is about this, and most of the thread has
turned to focus on this.

I wonder how big of an issue this NSL will become for Reddit, or whether it
will be forgotten about in a week.

I also wonder what it means for me as a Redditor. "If you have nothing to
hide" arguments aside, does this mean it is safe to assume that the NSA got
full access to all of Reddit's data and hoovered it all up? Or are these NSLs
only able to target individuals? Not sure you can really make that distinction
from a data mining standpoint I guess.

~~~
hxegon
No matter what the extent is, I have to assume that everything is compromised
and reddit is now totally untrustworthy.

------
nxzero
Turns out this was intended to be a April Fools joke; not by Reddit, but the
FBI. Pretty sick taste in jokes; FBI already had all of Reddit's data because
they're hosted on AWS; Amazon already gives all AWS data to the FBI.

------
wamatt
Serious question, what's to stop the NSL including language along the lines:
'Any warrant canaries need to remain in place'?

~~~
ars
An NSL can't just make stuff up. Everything in it must be specifically
authorized by congress or a court.

~~~
794CD01
The All Writs Act means that's not much of a bar.

------
p4wnc6
I was just about to ask if Hacker News has an NSL canary, when I saw this: <
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11402439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11402439)
>.

~~~
alphydan
Isn't all communication on HN public? (I thought the only additional info on
the servers was the votes. Or are IP addresses and timestamps stored for
visitors?)

------
foota
I found myself just now wondering whether a court case has been fought over
whether the government can force someone to keep up a canary. It's sad that we
can't even know this kind of information.

------
gpvos
It's a pity they can only use such a canary once.

~~~
CaptSpify
Couldn't they just update a timestamp? "As of april 3rd 2016, we haven't
received an NSL"

~~~
peterwwillis
IANAL, but based on the EFF's page on warrant canaries, it seems like they
can, in a way. They can state any legal processes they have _not_ been
involved in, for basically any period of time, though EFF recommends several
months between any such kind of report. The easiest thing is for them to
issue, say, quarterly transparency reports and saying "For this past quarter
we have received no XYZ".

~~~
ChristianBundy
Some services have a daily canary (like
[https://proxy.sh/canary](https://proxy.sh/canary)), but we don't know whether
they could be forced to sign a new canary even after they've been served an
NSL.

------
randommodnar
Why are you all arguing about fucking canaries? I grew up with this idea that
there was a _right_ to freedom of speech and expression. You're all playing
their little games when you should be standing up for your right.

~~~
nixgeek
In the case of violating the gag provisions of an NSL, that's a 'Fast Track'
to an 8x10 cell in an institution not necessarily of your choosing.

Do feel free to write your representatives and complain, but don't try and
sweep this all away under "right to freedom of speech and expression".
National security is far more nuanced.

~~~
randommodnar
Great. Freedom of speech in fucking quotes. National security is nuanced.
You've got to be kidding me. America has disappointed me.

~~~
freehunter
So do something about it. You can't complain in the preposterous way that
you're complaining and _not_ actively do something about it. And I'm not
talking about voting, it's decades too late for that, and you'd never get the
rest of the country to agree with your views.

Do something. You're sitting here bitching _us_ out for how the US government
works like it's our fault and we should have done something different. Well
what are _you_ doing? Because if the answer is "nothing", then maybe you
should sit down and reevaluate your tone.

~~~
Domenic_S
That's a bullshit response. You can't disagree with policy or people's
attitudes unless you're "doing something about it"?

~~~
freehunter
If you disagree that strongly with his attitude but aren't doing anything
different than he is, you're a hypocrite. What makes you better than him? What
puts you in a position to judge him?

~~~
Domenic_S
That is not how hypocrisy works.

------
Mendenhall
Company creates "Government request officer" position in company.

Company policy states each month a polygraph must be taken by "Government
request officer" covering "certain" topics, and the results are posted online.

This month the "Government request division" officer failed his poly.

The wording of poly test could be done to never even speak of nsl etc or even
what poly was designed to do, and no company document/policy or spoken word
ever says anything about the nsl etc.

------
lucaspiller
So as an average netizen what can I do about it? Is anyone actually going to
boycott Reddit, and lose access to all of the communities that are there
because of this?

------
dolguldur
Assuming reddit received a national security letter (NSL), what does it mean?
What are the implications?

------
nickysielicki
Reddit should take one for the team and shut the website down. Redirect it to
nsa.gov or a pastebin and provide 223MM monthly uniques with the impetus to
fix this fucked up country. Maybe a multi-billion dollar company disappearing
overnight would be enough to convince our lawmakers that this isn't compatible
with being a part of the new global economy. Maybe it would be enough to get
people in the streets.

As an aside, I'd like to see more sites put something like, "if we are ever
served a NSL, our website will stop operating", in their privacy policy.

The government can't force you to keep operating a business. If they want to
abuse NSL's, so be it. I want the John McCains in our government to realize
what they're doing.

~~~
jpttsn
At the risk of sounding cynical, I think this whole ordeal indicates the
opposite. If "people in the streets" is to be evidence that surveillance
"isn't compatible with being part of the new global economy," then we should
also take a hint from the lack of "people in the streets."

~~~
nickysielicki
That's fair.

It's also incredibly depressing.

------
pfortuny
Could this be an elaborate April's fool practical joke?

------
okasaki
Honestly the reddit admins lie so much and have so little respect for their
users that I don't think we can conclude anything about this.

------
god_bless_texas
We'll never know, but I have to wonder if it was bitcoin related. And I don't
mean like dark web, but like Mt Gox or other.

------
ISL
As a reddit users, might this give us standing to make a class action suit to
see the letter?

~~~
YesProcrast
Erm, can't edit thanks to noprocrast -- "As Reddit users" would be more
correct.

------
look_lookatme
Does a reddit thread constitute an email? How does the authorization define
what an email is?

------
tomlongson
For those who aren't familiar, a NSL Canary is like a Warrant Canary, but for
National Security Letters.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary)

Australia just outlawed warrant canaries. Scary times.

~~~
avz
> Australia just outlawed warrant canaries. Scary times.

Assuming you accept the need for the non-disclosure requirements in some court
orders and administrative subpoenas, wouldn't the decision to allow canaries
be a legal mistake in the first place? (Albeit AFAIK one also made by the US
Department of Justice)

The argument for the legality of canaries would have to rely on the
distinction between the affirmative and negative disclosure. But it is very
easy to imagine a service that scrapes sites with canaries and publishes an
_affirmative_ list of those which took theirs down recently (or in a given
time interval). This completely subverts the argument.

Is it perhaps yet another case where the legal minds failed to account for the
current (actually... two decades old) state of technology? Am I missing
something?

~~~
jessaustin
_But it is very easy to imagine a service that scrapes sites with canaries and
publishes an affirmative list of those which took theirs down recently (or in
a given time interval)._

[https://canarywatch.org/](https://canarywatch.org/)

~~~
e12e
Shouldn't that Reddit canary be dead, though?

[https://canarywatch.org/reddit/](https://canarywatch.org/reddit/)

~~~
jessaustin
I see this language at that location:

 _Reddit released its transparency report for 2015 and the warrant canary
language was missing._

Maybe that's an edit after your post. I agree that a silhouette of an expired
canary lying on its back, wings spread awkwardly, tongue sticking out, eyes
crossed, would make this communication more effective.

~~~
e12e
Yeah, that's odd. It's timestamped March 31st - perhaps it was serving a stale
application level cache (I've not been to the site in a while, or so I
thought). Now the canary-logo is taken down from the reddit listing on the
front-page too.

------
i_laugh_at_you
A workaround to the canary is to every month release an affidavit that says
that you have not received an NSL last month. The month you receive one you do
not release one.

~~~
maaku
The NSL could compell you to release an affidavit anyway.

~~~
rincebrain
The entire premise of the canary, and this discussion, is that you cannot
(currently, legally) be compelled to lie, you can merely be compelled to not
tell the truth.

If they could, we would not be observing any changes in warrant canaries,
ever.

~~~
maaku
Welcome to the real world, where armchair legal opinions don't matter. A
canary is a way of communicating information about the NSL, which is prevented
by the gag order of the NSL. The courts see through the canary for the
transparent practice that it is. And guess what? These days they side with the
government, not the recipient.

------
awinter-py
I'm surprised nobody has tried to game this system using the CFAA. The CFAA
makes unauthorized access a felony, i.e. it permits a site operator to define
criminal behavior as they see fit. (and there are prosecutions to back this
interpretation).

The hack: define 'unauthorized behavior' in your TOS / user agreement to
include release of data to any third party. A court can't order you to commit
a felony.

~~~
SwellJoe
A contract is not protection from a lawful order by police. e.g. you cannot
make a contract with the mafia, agreeing to never speak to police about the
business you conduct, and then expect the law to say, "Oh, OK. You have a
contract, of course we can't ask for those records! Sorry to have bothered
you."

In short, when a court orders you to turn over information, it is not a felony
to turn over that information, and in fact it is your legal obligation to do
so. You can argue under what terms (e.g. in sealed documents that will not be
disclosed in public records of the trial), which the court may or may not
agree to.

I oppose NSL letters, to be clear, but armchair lawyering aint gonna make you
or anyone else immune to them. As long as they are the law, you and I are
subject to them, no matter what terms of service we post on our websites.

~~~
awinter-py
Nothing to do with contract law -- the CFAA makes unauthorized access a
felony, and 'unauthorized access' has been taken to mean 'violations of the
terms of service'.

If the court rules to enforce the NSL, fine, but there's now a new precedent
that de-claws the CFAA; a solid win.

Either way it will be a fun appeals process.

~~~
SwellJoe
What do you believe "terms of service" is, if not a contract between a service
provider and their customer?

And, regardless, even if terms of service falls under something entirely
different from contract law, you cannot apply the law to law enforcement in
the same way it applies to you or I. Police openly carry firearms in places
where it is illegal for others to do so (and occasionally shoot and kill
people), courts regularly order activity that is ordinarily illegal (or even
unconstitutional without the order from the court), etc. Police search people,
homes, and autos; not legal for you or me, but with the proper procedures, it
is legal for police. You're trying to apply law in a way that is nonsensical.
It is not that law enforcement is above the law, but that the courts have said
that the NSL is not violating the law when law enforcement officers do it.

Again, I don't _like_ that NSL is a thing, and I really don't like that courts
have upheld them as constitutional. But, that is not the same as saying you
can "hack" the legal system to make an otherwise lawful order from law
enforcement into a non-lawful order and that they or the courts would have any
concern about that hack.

 _" If the court rules to enforce the NSL, fine, but there's now a new
precedent that de-claws the CFAA; a solid win."_

So, if the court rules that law enforcement can enforce an NSL, regardless of
the CFAA, you consider it a solid win? For whom? All it does is further cement
law enforcement's ability to issue administrative NSLs.

Again, you're somehow conflating the law as we must follow it and the law as
law enforcement must follow it, in a situation where courts have _already_
said they have this authority. There is nothing we can put in our terms of
service that magically makes law enforcement subject to it, in pursuit of duty
as a law enforcement officer. Police can lie, can detain people, can stick
them in jail, etc. A "No Trespassing" sign will not stop an officer in pursuit
or with a warrant.

CFAA will not be de-clawed by this, and no one would even try to take such a
case to court.

~~~
awinter-py
No, courts don't order people to commit felonies. Courts order people to do
things they are ordinarily not required to do (pay money, stop selling a
product, stop following somebody) but don't order people to commit acts
normally prohibited.

(The exception is that a court can order law enforcement to incarcerate or
kill a convicted felon; though we call it a ruling rather than a court order.
That's not what we're talking about here).

Re: 'what is terms of service' \-- by reading this paragraph you are hereby
bound to mail me one fresh batch of cupcakes on the first monday of every
month.

Have you entered into a contract? My take is that you haven't because I
haven't paid you (consideration) and you didn't sign or click agree (intent to
contract, acceptance).

~~~
SwellJoe
OK, then, sounds like you've got it figured out. Give it a shot. Let us know
how it turns out.

