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Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

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Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

jcrites wrote: post #61
jakejarvis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad you guys included this part: > "Although signing the declaration makes it impossible for a third party to produce arbitrary declarations, it does not prevent them from using force to coerce rsync.net to produce false declarations." That's always been a question in the back of my mind when seeing all these canaries. Anyone know if ordering a company to do this is feasible under US law, either by force or by autho…

The EFF has a FAQ about warrant canaries which addresses some of these topics: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/warrant-canary-faq It is believed to be unlikely that a court would compel a company's false speech to maintain a warrant canary. > Have courts upheld compelled speech? > Rarely. In a few instances, the courts have upheld compelled speech in the commercial context, where the government shows that the c…

The right question isn't “will courts issue a direct order to maintain a warrant canary to conceal a warrant (or, more likely, an administrative subpoena like an NSL) protected by a non-disclosure order”, it is “will courts punish signalling the existence of a warrant (etc.) protected by a non-disclosure order by dropping a warrant canary as they would any other action done to signal the existence of such a warrant.”

Which is why even the EFF doesn't recommend dropping the canary immediately but instead going to court to seek vindication of the right to drop the canary before so doing.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#82

Post by arkades »

oldgregg wrote: post #69

Could a company create a warrant canary for every user? Just a simple notice when you login to your account? If the premise of the canary is that they can force you to keep silent but can't compel you to speak, what would prevent a company from doing this?

That that degree of behavior would be completely unsympathetic to both jurists and jurors, pretty much guaranteeing it would get slapped down in court eventually, even if totally legit

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#83

Post by dragonwriter »

balabaster wrote: post #71
jakejarvis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad you guys included this part: > "Although signing the declaration makes it impossible for a third party to produce arbitrary declarations, it does not prevent them from using force to coerce rsync.net to produce false declarations." That's always been a question in the back of my mind when seeing all these canaries. Anyone know if ordering a company to do this is feasible under US law, either by force or by autho…

Um... wouldn't the act of compelling them to produce false declarations for the purpose of obtaining sales under false pretenses fall under conspiracy to commit (wire) fraud which is a federal crime? Are there any lawyers that could comment on this?

> wouldn't the act of compelling them to produce false declarations for the purpose of obtaining sales under false pretenses fall under conspiracy to commit (wire) fraud which is a federal crime?

No, it would not, among other reasons because that is not the purpose.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#84

Post by rc_kas »

malnourish wrote: post #37
mrguyorama wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am hesitant to conflate actual neo-nazis with actual politics

They are actual politics, regardless of your or my beliefs. They vote, and if there are enough of them, someone will cater to them. To willfully ignore them is to ignore a sad reality, they will continue to grow unabated; to meaningfully engage them is to platform a disingenuous group (not to mention giving their beliefs acknowledgement). It seems to be a catch-22 to me.

The child porn guy also votes. Are you going to call that political too?

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#85

Post by SahAssar »

nabla9 wrote: post #24
sixhobbits wrote: post #5

unpopular opinion: the main point of these canaries is PR. As far as I understand (and I understand nearly nothing about US law, so pinch of salt blah blah), exploiting legal loopholes is something that makes people excited and talk about your product, but doesn't really change anything in a court. If you assume the US govt is an adversary or potential adversary, and you assume that they are fairly powerful through d…

The way I understand the issue, it's complicated. It may or may not work. It can work in some country and not in some others. * A online warrant statement canary that disappears when it does not apply anymore. If there is a gag order preventing this Cloudfare promises to challenge this in the court. >if Cloudflare were asked to take an action violating one of the warrant canaries, we would pursue legal remedies chall…

> For example: Coudfare (sic) HQ may not know what their workers in France are asked to do.

IIRC this is one of the things that the Chinese surveillance law includes, that it may force individuals at a company to provide them with information without alerting the normal channels in the company.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#86

Post by throwaway88643 »

goto11 wrote: post #50
DannyB2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you don't actively do anything. It is the absence of action. You don't REMOVE a warrant canary. You DO NOT update it. As of date X we have not been forced to do BAD THING. I simply stop updating X on the notice. In the past, the updates had happened at interval Z. Once interval Z passes without an update, everyone knows that I've done BAD THING. I didn't take any action to disclose anything. I simply stopped up…

Developers often thinks laws work just like computers: If you can find a loophole where you technically follow the letter of the law, while undermining its intent, then you have hacked the law and can't be punished! Judges do not think like that though. Remember when Microsoft was forced by a judge to offer a version of Windows without the Internet Explorer browser? Microsoft just removed all the dll's IE used. But s…

I’m guessing this depends on the judge? I was in traffic court and one of the lawyers argued that the statute did not explicitly say what his client did was illegal.

I don’t recall what it was, but he read the statute and explained the technicality and the judge agreed with him.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#87

Post by balabaster »

dragonwriter wrote: post #83
balabaster wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um... wouldn't the act of compelling them to produce false declarations for the purpose of obtaining sales under false pretenses fall under conspiracy to commit (wire) fraud which is a federal crime? Are there any lawyers that could comment on this?

> wouldn't the act of compelling them to produce false declarations for the purpose of obtaining sales under false pretenses fall under conspiracy to commit (wire) fraud which is a federal crime? No, it would not, among other reasons because that is not the purpose.

Definitions stolen from Wikipedia:

Conspiracy - In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime at some time in the future. E.g. the court (judge) and the seller.

Fraud - wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain... for example making untruthful claims for the purpose of continuing to sell a product under false pretenses.

Mail and Wire Fraud - Fraud by facilitated through the mail system or via electronic means.

Can you elaborate as to how a compelled untruthful (electronic) declaration for the purpose of continuing to obtain sales of your product is NOT (wire) fraud?

Not trying to be an ass, I'd just like to understand.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#88

Post by crankylinuxuser »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #8

>has never terminated a customer or taken down content due to political pressure https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/ No comment on whether or not the termination was justified.

Neonazis/Daily Stormer was a canary.

I think back to the Skokie Nazi trial on how this should have played out. The Constitution wasn't for protecting when times and situations were good, but when they were off the rails and terribad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...

Cloudflare tried to be this impartial "we're only a data delivery agent - we make no ethics claims of anyone who uses our service - we're a common carrier like service".... Except when it came down to the hard decisions, they sided in smashing the canary into tiny pieces.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#89

Post by throwaway88643 »

Arnt wrote: post #29
skrebbel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never completely understood this. What prevents you from lying about this? I mean, let's imagine a hypothetical 100% evil three letter agency. They'd just threaten you and your family members' lives and you'd keep updating the canary right? How can we know you keep updating it out of your own free will?

Well, of course anyone can point a gun at your newborn baby. But a government agency have to comply with the law, and the law makes certain requirements on officers of companies. The details are complicated, but simplifying, if a company is publicly traded and someone whose title starts with V or C says something in public, then it has to be true. Three-letter government agencies can't both comply with the law and at…

Didn’t Snowden reveal that government agencies routinely break the law?

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#90

Post by throwaway88643 »

joering2 wrote: post #66
rsync wrote: post #3

The rsync.net warrant canary is 13 years old this April: https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt "The first commercial use of a warrant canary was by the US cloud storage provider rsync.net, which began publishing its canary in 2006. In addition to a digital signature, it provides a recent news headline as proof that the warrant canary was recently posted as well as mirroring the posting internationally."[…

Whats the purpose? Most judges will understand what warrant canary is, and can simply ask them to continue signing it. Judge has the power to gag you, or force you to sign or continue doing something. Its very common in multi-scheme crimes where forcing one criminal to continue their criminal conduct is "greater good" for the sake of a whole investigation.

Surely if the criminal is an assassin, the judge wouldn’t order them to continue taking contracts for “the greater goood.”
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