[Support-team] warrant canaries controversy?

Mallory Knodel mallory at mayfirst.org
Fri Nov 25 14:10:01 EST 2016


Depends on what was said whether or not one retracts. I wouldn't suggest
saying something we don't know, like they haven't received a letter or
they're not under a gag order.

Because maybe they are.

And MFPL has been in this position before. We will be again. And if
folks were talking about us pulling the plug, and we expressly said that
we weren't, we would want people who played into the hype and said that
we might to retract that. Because we want people to have confidence in
us. And we don't want to lose members.

So Riseup doesn't want people to leave, panic, etc. because they're not
going anywhere. That's what they said.

Hype is a problem. It is possible to be direct with folks about risks
without it.

-Mallory

On 25/11/16 08:51 PM, Alfredo Lopez wrote:
> I would *strongly* advise against any retraction at this point. That
> would be very very premature, potentially confusing and very potentially
> damaging.
>
> The statement Mallory is citing does not negate the issuance of a NSL.
> At all. It merely assures people Rise Up is not "pulling the plug".
>
> Their tweets are very cryptic. I think something is wrong. Otherwise,
> they would have *said* "We did not receive a National Security Letter".
>
> Or, if that's not true, they'll tell us. In reality, there's no real
> harm done in this incident. Not really.
>
> But in the meantime, remember that if they did receive a letter and you
> tell people they didn't, you are betraying your movement (I'm talking
> about the Left of the United States, btw).
>
> *The* priority of a movement organization that is under attack is to let
> the rest of the movement know the attack is happening. For a bunch of
> reasons we all know. *The* priority.
>
> Abrazos,
>
> Alfredo
>
>
>
> On 11/25/2016 03:12 AM, Mallory Knodel wrote:
>> Whew: https://twitter.com/riseupnet/status/801902121150869504
>>
>> I think retractions of any statements that folks have made that played
>> into the hype are important to make now. Trust is precarious and we
>> can't be careless with it.
>>
>> -Mallory
>>
>> On 23/11/16 08:26 AM, James Sheldon wrote:
>>> There is apparently a controversy about a rather prominent
>>> left-anarchist hosting service's warrant canary not being updated, and
>>> although it seems like most of the people commenting it are merely
>>> indulging in conspiracy theory and have no actual evidence backing up
>>> any of their claims ... it makes me wonder what the implications of
>>> this sort of thing would be for mayfirst and what we would do if we
>>> were faced with a similar situation.  Hopefully we have a better plan
>>> in place than just "tweet cryptic messages" and make people try to
>>> read between the lines... which seems to be what that particular host
>>> is doing.   Anyways, I was hoping that someone might be able to
>>> contextualize what's going on, so that I am not relying on rather
>>> unreliable social media to understand what this sort of situation
>>> might mean.
>>>
>>> James
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-- 
Mallory Knodel
May First/People Link :: mayfirst.org
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