I apologize in advance if this sounds pedantic or like I am just trying to be difficult to be difficult. I am genuinely interested in this subject and appreciate your response. You never really stated what I am doing differently in the canary-removed universe (C0) than I would be doing in the universe where the canary is still present(C1). Respectfully it seems you gave reasons why surveillance is bad, but its not clear what utility I derive from the canary and what I would do differently in C0 vs C1.

I probably should have been more explicit about two of my big problems/uncertainties with warrant canaries in my initial comment. The biggest issue is that they only really seem to matter in circumstances where I assumed the service provided was a secure and private communication platform. My personal threat model does not treat the reddit platform as a secure and private communication platform and Reddit Inc. is just slightly less of an adversary than Eve's Agency. (sidenote: You are Threat Model Shostack correct?)

My other issue is that the canaries seem to be backward looking and do not do much for my future outlook. It seems that the knowledge that an NSL was served just tells me about the past, but very little about the future. Should I assume that since an NSL was served once that I should expect that they will continue to be served repeatedly and regularly going forward? I am having trouble expressing the latter adequately and clearly, hopefully it is teased out below.

For the sake of argument I am assuming/ignoring that Eve does not do global surveillance and cannot easily associate requests from my IP to reddit with submissions/comment timestamps, vote changes, etc.

> If the NSA hoovered up this data, suddenly they might learn a lot
> about you that they didn't know before

In C0, I am screwed, Eve's organization knows I frequent /r/BDSM, /r/guns, /r/earthliberationfront, etc. Am I to assume that further NSLs will be served in the future and therefore I stop visiting my favorite subreddits? If I was concerned about the privacy of my actions what was I doing using a public insecure communication platform?

In C1, I continue to visit /r/BDSM, /r/guns, /r/earthliberationfront, etc and the record of my sensitive activities on reddit is even larger if they are served an NSL in the future.

> 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.

In C0 I have a greater reason to believe that I am on the "inconvenient list". In C1 I am still doing all the things its just I have less certainty if I am on the list.

> 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.

I don't think this sounds crazy. I just do not understand what the difference is between C0 and C1. As far as I am concerned the only difference between C0 and C1 is that I know my activities may have been reviewed by Eve in C0.

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

As far as that study is concerned the difference between C0 and C1 is that in C0 I am more aware or "subtly reminded" of the existence of mass surveilance and therefore self-censor. There are fewer subtler reminders of mass surveillance in C1 therefore I self-censor less in C1 than in C0. That makes canaries seem bad?