Can someone explain how a canary is implemented in software exactly?
Did you receive a National Security Letter? No? Okay, I'll update the date. Canary date is updated. Yes? Okay, see you in the after-life I guess. Canary update process dies.
Thanks
Silent Circle removes warrant canary
71–80 of 197 posts
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know, but even if you retain that right, it seems almost obvious that you don't have the right to publicly bid for counsel. Presumably the gag order would extend to any lawyer you contact.
Well, if the counsel of your choice was predefined as the one that bid the lowest in an open auction, then why would you lose that right? Could the court further restrict that right down to the specific lawyer they want representing you? I do agree that the gag order would extend to any lawyer you contacted after the public bidding process concluded.
Why would you get to keep a right you just made up for yourself? If your random corporate process clashes with the law, the law wins. You still retain your constitutional right to counsel, you just need to contact prospective lawyers through private channels, even if that procedure conflicts with the bylaws of your board of directors.
There is no clever loophole here, it's a very simple order. The law says "no [recipient] shall disclose to any person that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained access to information or records under this section." https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2709
Here the definition of "disclose" is "whatever convoluted process you can think of".
Reading further, it does say you can talk to an attorney, but that doesn't mean you can make a Craigslist post asking for lawyers with experience in the Patriot Act.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rsync.net warrant canary has been issued monthly, with news headlines, for over ten years now.[1][2] We split it for each location - SanDiego/Denver/Zurich/HongKong. Further, the individual location canaries can be retrieved from the actual storage array itself - that is, you can just fetch it via sftp/scp/rsync/whatever from (whatever system your account is on). Finally, our canary is machine readable/parseable…
Can you comment on if you believe these to be actually effective? I don't see how when the USG says that you cannot divulge that you've received any type of NSL, they can easily say you must continue to act like you have in the past. I just don't see a court or a judge upholding a "cute" or "technical" workaround for something like this. Haven't there been rulings in the past where these aren't valid, ie just like th…
The whole point of warrant canaries is that while a judge can compel you to not say something, compelling speech is a much higher burden.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you comment on if you believe these to be actually effective? I don't see how when the USG says that you cannot divulge that you've received any type of NSL, they can easily say you must continue to act like you have in the past. I just don't see a court or a judge upholding a "cute" or "technical" workaround for something like this. Haven't there been rulings in the past where these aren't valid, ie just like th…
"Can you comment on if you believe these to be actually effective? I don't see how when the USG says that you cannot divulge that you've received any type of NSL, they can easily say you must continue to act like you have in the past." The entire basis of the warrant canary is that it's not simply asking me to stop doing something , but rather, a judge would have to order me to make false public statements. That's a…
> Can the government compel my speech ? Can the government compel me to make false statements ?
These are interesting questions, but I'm not at all sure the answer is not 'yes' to both of them, under the right circumstances.
The Fifth Amendment would not seem to imply (there's no criminal proceeding, and not necessarily any risk of self-incrimination) and the First Amendment, while applicable, would not necessarily prevent such a thing, in my estimation, if the circumstances were (in the government's estimation) sufficiently dire.
Alternatively, in some cases the USG could simply seize the domain name and/or server and serve up any content they wanted. See, e.g., Playpen. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/after-fbi-briefly... Though presumably they could not do this if the site or service operator were not also implicated in some form of illegal activity.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you comment on if you believe these to be actually effective? I don't see how when the USG says that you cannot divulge that you've received any type of NSL, they can easily say you must continue to act like you have in the past. I just don't see a court or a judge upholding a "cute" or "technical" workaround for something like this. Haven't there been rulings in the past where these aren't valid, ie just like th…
"Can you comment on if you believe these to be actually effective? I don't see how when the USG says that you cannot divulge that you've received any type of NSL, they can easily say you must continue to act like you have in the past." The entire basis of the warrant canary is that it's not simply asking me to stop doing something , but rather, a judge would have to order me to make false public statements. That's a…
Can the government compel me to make false statements ?
In what scenario would the government need to compel you to make false statements?
The law is already that if you receive a NSL, then you are not allowed to divulge that you've received one. If you do, then you may be prosecuted for breaking the law.
In the scenario involving warrant canaries, the only difference between just outright saying you've received an NSL vs removing the canary is the reliance on some 'technical workaround' where the removal of information is not considered speech and/or doesn't divulge the information.
The judge is not going to tell you that you have to lie to keep the information up. But they may tell you that if you break the law, by divulging (through whatever means) that you have received an NSL, that you will receive the appropriate punishment.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#76I've been using Silent Circle's black phone 2 for almost a year now, and it is a rather terrible experience. They are ahead on app-specific permission denials, but they have hardly any sense of decent QA for their SilentOS. Previous updates had power regressions where the phone would be dead from a full charge within 8 hours. Took 3 months for them to fix that. Most recent update no longer has a functioning headphone…
its tricky to do what they do with the limits they have on resources..they had tried to get me on board in 2010 as android dev..but I bailed after determining that they would just not come close to the resources to actually pull it off with a level high quality needed....mobile OSes are harder to fork than desktop OSes
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It also is crashing after 15 minutes of map usage as it seems to overheat. So it might be worth checking in "Developer options" if "Force GPU Rendering" is checked. If it is, try un-checking it and seeing if it keeps your phone a little cooler.
It appears to be off by default.
Dag. I know one of the few issues I have with my LG G4 was it getting hot when it was set to force GPU rendering. Hopefully an update should take care of it.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#78Current 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 imagine there are legal difficulties with being more transparent, but I will say Silent Circle's occasional failures to manage their canary well have made it an unreliable signal.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#79Warrant canaries have outlived their usefulness. Did anyone stop using Reddit when they removed theirs? Or Apple products, when they removed theirs?
I'm sure some people did. Probably the same number of people who started using them because the canaries were there.
However, that doesn't mean users haven't changed their behaviour in response to warrant canaries.
It's just not a lot of people, and it isn't clear we want it to be that way either. We don't want there to be a disincentive for companies creating them.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, if the counsel of your choice was predefined as the one that bid the lowest in an open auction, then why would you lose that right? Could the court further restrict that right down to the specific lawyer they want representing you? I do agree that the gag order would extend to any lawyer you contacted after the public bidding process concluded.
Why would you get to keep a right you just made up for yourself? If your random corporate process clashes with the law, the law wins. You still retain your constitutional right to counsel, you just need to contact prospective lawyers through private channels, even if that procedure conflicts with the bylaws of your board of directors. There is no clever loophole here, it's a very simple order. The law says "no [recip…
I don't necessarily agree with your reasoning; however, it looks like one's right to counsel is restricted if one is not charged with a crime:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/352/330/ (1957)
Further, it seems that Miranda only applies to custodial interrogations.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/384/436/ (1966)
I do think that if one is charged or restrained that the process might work. Of course, that's a pretty big escalation!