LINK TO RECEIPTS: https://imgur.com/a/g7gkYNE

On December 23rd, 2019, Alex Gleason, admin of Spinster.xyz, received Email correspondence from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) requesting user data (receipt 2, 3). Gleason disclosed this information in Spinster Tech, an unsecured tech chat open to the public to join, regardless of the fact that he had previously warned users of the tech chat that correspondence in the channel was to be considered unsecured (receipt 1).

Upon receiving the first email from the FBI, not only did Gleason fail to warn the feminists on his platform that they may be looking at a subpoena from the FBI, he chose to ignore implications for his userbase (in this case, a community of women who are radical feminists), even after it was determined that the email in question was DKIM signed and there was cause to believe that it is legitimate, as the phone number in the email refers to an actual FBI office in Springfield, MA, and the email is asking for either a legal representative or a "custodian of records" in order to serve the subpoena.

Gleason received a second email from the same agent, Maria Classon, ~December 31st, 2019, at 10:57 AM, also DKIM signed (receipt 8, 9). Gleason did not share the full email header information to the chatroom, only indicating that it was “DKIM signed”, he thinks it’s “legit”, and that they were lawyering up.

Gleason and M.K. Fain decided to implement a warrant canary they promised users would be updated monthly (receipt 8, 10, 23) after the email was received (https://spinster.xyz/canary, http://archive.ph/LUbvS) and made changes to Spinster.xyz’s privacy policy (receipt 23) (https://web.archive.org/web/20191130191332/https://spinster.xyz/about/privacy, https://spinster.xyz/about/privacy). This action does not appear to be an effort to warn users but rather appears to afford Gleason and Fain more “legal wiggle room” to hand over user data to the feds in certain situations, as evidenced by receipt 23.

M.K. herself stated that a lawyer from the Electronic Frontier Foundation advised them that the email did not appear to be a scam.

In Fain’s own words, “I believe this gives us the wiggle room to either comply or not on a case-by-case basis as far as our users are concerned”. In other words, the first concern of Spinster admins was their own safety, and their ability to cooperate with law enforcement, rather than the protection of user data and warning of feminists. Their choice to hand over any woman’s information to the patriarchal government could affect users who post content which is found to be in violation of U.S law, or users they personally disagree with, or users the admins of Spinster simply “don’t like”. It is up to their discretion who to sell out.

Furthermore, Gleason and Fain were both offered help and advice from users of the tech chat who had the best interest of Spinster users at heart, but not only was this advice not taken into consideration, it was swept under the rug without a word of acknowledgement. As Spinster has not received a gag order, one can only wonder why the admins chose to ignore information that could be used to protect feminist women on Spinster. 

M.K. Fain became concerned that this information was being leaked outside of the tech chat. Women were indeed being tipped off for their own safety. Fain became aware of this and was concerned that women were being warned before Gleason and herself acquired legal assistance to protect themselves (evidenced in receipt 24).

As of today January 9, 2020, users have still not been warned, and the screenshots of the email correspondence from the FBI and the resulting conversation about said correspondence have been removed from Spinster’s tech channel (Evidenced in receipts 37, 38, 39).

EDIT: As of 2022, Spinster’s warrant canary has not been updated: https://archive.ph/JY0Mf