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People use rise up under the impression that they wouldn't cooperate with law enforcement but 8 years ago they buckled under pressure and handed over info to the FBI. (The warrant canary worked and tipped some people off but riseup's later public statements undermined that) We don't all know how we'd act under threats of imprisonment but many people counted on their explicit promise of non cooperation and they justified breaking that promise instead of admitting the fuckup.
If you choose to keep using rise up just be aware of this. if it's a dealbreaker consider alternatives. Some are listed at https://blackblogs.org/policy/
Scenes admins have been brave enough to make a public non-cooperation promise that there's no reason to believe has been broken so far. The cases above suggest that if anything did happen we should examine the warrant canary and other hard evidence over possibly coerced explanations after the fact if there are inconsistencies. (however this does not mean we should immediately accuse them of snitching if things don't add up)
True safety may not be possible in this world but let's do what we can to keep each other informed on the way to preventing cop city from ever being built. or burnt immediately upon completion 🙂
P.S. Protonmail also complies with cops and has specifically done so against anticapitalists. https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/06/protonmail-logged-ip-address-of-french-activist-after-order-by-swiss-authorities
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Below are quotes from https://web.archive.org/web/20220826163958/https://riseupsnitched.com/
On November 16, 2016 Riseup.net's warrant canary expired and was not renewed. In the months that followed the company issued several tweets, one cryptically trying to offer reassurance, another more specifically asking for calm.
No specifics were given until February 16, 2017 when Riseup.net issued a statement explaining their silence. They confirmed the worst, stating:
"After exhausting our legal options, Riseup recently chose to comply with two sealed warrants from the FBI, rather than facing contempt of court (which would have resulted in jail time for Riseup birds and/or termination of the Riseup organization). The first concerned the public contact address for an international DDoS extortion ring. The second concerned an account using ransomware to extort money from people."
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While they may have not cooperated with the NSA, this is a distinction without a difference. Is anyone concerned about cooperation with the NSA and not concerned about cooperation with the FBI? And in case they want to get away with saying that is technically true, the rest of the statement throws that right out the window.
"We are not working with any government agency. We have never simply handed over information when requested, and for years have had a no logging policy. We have fought and won every time anyone has tried to get us to give up information. We have never turned over any user data to any third party, fourth party, fifth party or any party."
Each one of these sentences is so wholly incompatible the sentence "Riseup recently chose to comply with two sealed warrants from the FBI" that any attempt to make them both true renders words themselves meaningless.
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What Should Riseup.net Do?
In short, probably dissolve. [administrative note: please do not dissolve] This is the remedy they prescribe for themselves when they say "We would rather stop being Riseup before we [work with the FBI]. Remember, this is not a one-time regrettable mistake. In the years that followed they neither expressed remorse of any kind, not updated their promotional material or contracts to give their users a more accurate view of what they can expect.
Short of that, updating their materials to reflect the truth, that they have worked with government agencies, have handed over information when requested would be a good start.
Found on Scenes from the Atlanta Forest
