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Silent Circle removes warrant canary

techcrunch.com

1–10 of 197 posts

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#4
Current warrant canaries are useless, it's a one time fuse. We need new, better, recurring (i.e. monthly) warrant canaries of different types (common canaries, individual canaries for each user). I want something like this everywhere:

    Jan 2016 - we haven't received any NSL

    Feb 2016 - we haven't received any NSL concerning your account

    Mar 2016 - we haven't received any NSL

    Apr 2016 - 

    Jun 2016 - we haven't received any NSL

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#5
I'm not sure warrant canaries are particularly useful anymore. Yes, it's nice to know when a company has received a secret order or request for cooperation. However, any company that stores user information is going to receive such an order or request at some point, it's practically inevitable. Furthermore, one can never be assured that a canary is entirely reliable as a signal -- just look at the other comments with conjecture as to why a canary might be removed. Thus I would conclude that the use of a warrant canary should not be taken as conveying any useful information about a company, or not any more useful information that a mere marketing statement that they are sympathetic with user privacy concerns.

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#6
I have an honest, and probably dumb, question: how do warrant canaries actually avoid the prohibition against disclosing the receipt of a national security letter? Like, how is taking down a warrant canary legally dissimilar from just tweeting "we got an NSL"? If it semantically "means" the same thing, then why is one illegal and one legal?

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#7

Current warrant canaries are useless, it's a one time fuse. We need new, better, recurring (i.e. monthly) warrant canaries of different types (common canaries, individual canaries for each user). I want something like this everywhere: Jan 2016 - we haven't received any NSL Feb 2016 - we haven't received any NSL concerning your account Mar 2016 - we haven't received any NSL Apr 2016 - Jun 2016 - we haven't received an…

Why monthly and not daily? Or hourly?

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#8

I have an honest, and probably dumb, question: how do warrant canaries actually avoid the prohibition against disclosing the receipt of a national security letter? Like, how is taking down a warrant canary legally dissimilar from just tweeting "we got an NSL"? If it semantically "means" the same thing, then why is one illegal and one legal?

I think the idea is that a warrant canary is regularly updated. And the fact that it is NOT updated would be an indicator that a warrant (or whatever) has been served. So it's the INACTION that triggers it, not an actual action (like tweeting).

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#10

Current warrant canaries are useless, it's a one time fuse. We need new, better, recurring (i.e. monthly) warrant canaries of different types (common canaries, individual canaries for each user). I want something like this everywhere: Jan 2016 - we haven't received any NSL Feb 2016 - we haven't received any NSL concerning your account Mar 2016 - we haven't received any NSL Apr 2016 - Jun 2016 - we haven't received an…

I believe the receipt of an NSL prohibits future announcements like that.
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