Is Reddit Under Secret Surveillance by the Government?

[Mikeybb]

Let's wait until after April 1st to see if this is still up. April 1st is the worst day to publish legitimate news.

Very good point.

What I have come away with here is that the concept of inserting a "canary" like this into legal documentation is an interesting idea and sounds well = worth having.
That is, unless it transpires that it is vulnerable to the organisation being instructed to keep the dead "canary" effectively nailed to the perch by a legal order requiring their cooperation to the point of lying in the publicly available iteration of the documentation while protected by the real version sealed for the duration of said instruction.

My understanding of the intricacies of international law and the various national security exemptions is too shallow to know if that would be a legal move by any group.

 

[happy_turtle]

This was first reported by Reuters, not a source known for making light hearted jokes. It was also posted on March 31st, so I think we can discount the April Fools Theory.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-reddit-idUSKCN0WX2YF

 

[MCerberus]

I've been awake for 100 minutes and already Poe's Law has driven me mad.

 

[The Great JT]

Land of the free and home of the brave, everyone. Maybe it's time to alter that to Land of the Suspected Terrorists and Home of the Paranoid.

 

[RaikuFA]

Go ahead. I only post on /r/suicidewatch to vent and learn how to cope with those thoughts.

 

[thewatergamer]

Remember when the government wasn't overtly paranoid about every little thing and constantly pried into everyone's personal information? Those were the days...

 

[Naldan]

This situation comes to a boiling point soonish, at least in the US. If the gouvernment would release and propagize a statement and release reports and statistics on how this mass surveillance has prevented that or this many terrorist attacks, it would certainly dwindle the public pressure to a certain amount, giving them not only more trust but credibility also. And credibility is a finite resource the gouvernment is soon to run out, another factor why Trump has it so easy with being a conman most likely . At least this would be the case if the US climate would be very similar to that of Germany.

So why don't they do it? Because of security reasons, they say and are likely right. And maybe also (speculation) because it would turn out that this is powermongering, unreasonable and corrupt. But this will get diminishing returns when they face masses upon masses rioting, not even comparable to that of very recent time, since the mass would be affected, not "just" a minority.

Reddit simply proves that it gets worse and worse since it gets more publicly known and the gouvernment loses its credibility in the mainstream more and more, losing more power and control.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Ah yes, but now they can read reddit while at work and claim they're not slacking off. Ingenious really, they could spend all day on the Titty Drop subreddit and claim they're doing 'research'.

You joke, but I work for a design company and you'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't be) of how many people want to put hookers, strippers, sirens, ext all over their brand. I have literally searched Google images for references of topless mermaids with my boss' permission.

 

[Nurb]

This was first reported by Reuters, not a source known for making light hearted jokes. It was also posted on March 31st, so I think we can discount the April Fools Theory.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-reddit-idUSKCN0WX2YF

Well pranks have been known to occur a day before and after the first, so it's still a possibility.

 

[Leg End]

Remember when the government wasn't overtly paranoid about every little thing and constantly pried into everyone's personal information? Those were the days...

So, not since maybe the 1700s?

 

[Baresark]

Let's wait until after April 1st to see if this is still up. April 1st is the worst day to publish legitimate news.

This is exactly my thought actually. I hate the internet on April 1st.

That said, it seems confirmed as real.

For the record, I hate reddit.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Yeah - Personified Democracy? Hi, this is a concerned citizen speaking. Can I get a refund; it feels like you're turning vaguely Fascist behind our backs as time goes on...

The Western World: "But if we don't snoop on our citizens, ISIS wins! You don't want ISIS to win, do you?! Or maybe you're a commie pinko from Canada who thinks the world's all sunshine and buttercups, huh?!"

Hasn't it occurred to you that fear engenders fear? The more you squeeze the vice, the more disgruntled elements are going to fall out, get sucked into a competing ideology and assume that storming the gates with old AK-47s and leftovers from the conflicts in Bosnia in the nineties is actually a freakishly good idea.

The Western World: "Um... VOTE TRUMP AND KEEP WATCHING THE KARDASHIANS, SHEEPLE!"

Yeah. I guess I'll stay in Softcore Commie Pinko Land, where we think that a multilingual and multicultural society is a strong and generally unified one...

 

[Death916]

I was under the impression all media was under government surveillance anyway. Whats new?

 

[ThreeName]

OT: Why Reddit? Why not 4chan. Now there's a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Perhaps it's the one place on the Internet that even the terrorists are afraid of going to?

Nothing stays on in 4chan's servers, but everything is recorded in screencaps and is always public. There's not really any good reason to be using 4chan for any illegal activity where the crime isn't in the content(i.e. what's being posted)

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

...I thought the Internet came about in order to make a legally neutral territory,that no government can muck with? Someone needs to tell the Alphabet Agencies that they're out of their jurisdiction.

The Internet came about to link governmental and military agencies together to facilitate the flow of information if I recall correctly.

Besides, the servers and wires have to exist somewhere. And the NSA gives no shits about "jurisdictions".

 

[direkiller]

OT: Why Reddit? Why not 4chan. Now there's a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Perhaps it's the one place on the Internet that even the terrorists are afraid of going to?

Because setting up shop on the same site whos users regularly hack your twitter account and websites seems like a great idea.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/anonymous-hacks-isis-website-replaces-6905409

 

[Zydrate]

Is there something they're not watching?

 

[Steve the Pocket]

...I thought the Internet came about in order to make a legally neutral territory,that no government can muck with? Someone needs to tell the Alphabet Agencies that they're out of their jurisdiction.

Ha ha, who the hell told you that? Nowhere is outside the jurisdiction of every government; that sounds like the kind of conspiracy theory cooked up by the sort of people who believe in freemen-on-the-land or sovereign-citizen bullshit.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Is there something they're not watching?

They're definitely not watching themselves. Otherwise, they'd have a heart attack at just what they've become.

 

[webkilla]

I know this was meant as an april first joke - but frankly... I would be disapointed if the NSA doesn't already have a little server somewhere with a script that searches for keywords and phrases across reddit - and tags posts that might be from 'people of interest'