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Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

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141–150 of 163 posts

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#141
It's a real shame warranty canaries are illegal in Australia, it has on several occasions made me feel less confident about software, services or people involved in them here.

src (there are many but...): https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/03/australia_out...

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#142

I wonder about this loophole: Fully public communication, 24/7. Absurd, sure, but could it work? Set up your email so that anybody in the world can read it (not send from your address, though). Have a camera in your mailroom that streams to the internet that's high def enough to read off your letters as you open them (oops, top secret! Too late I already opened it here!). Have all your phone audio streaming to the in…

> Have all your phone audio streaming to the internet.

This may be illegal in many jurisdictions. There are at least a few states that require 2 party consent to a recording of a phone call. There are some 1 party consent states. Not sure about the ratio...

Not sure what how it'd pan out across state line phone calls.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#143
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Part of the job of lawyers is to know the judges they interact with and what sorts of claims they'll take seriously and which ones they'll overrule. That has very little to do with the kind of immutable logic outsiders tend to try to read into the law.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#144

I wonder about this loophole: Fully public communication, 24/7. Absurd, sure, but could it work? Set up your email so that anybody in the world can read it (not send from your address, though). Have a camera in your mailroom that streams to the internet that's high def enough to read off your letters as you open them (oops, top secret! Too late I already opened it here!). Have all your phone audio streaming to the in…

> Have all your phone audio streaming to the internet. This may be illegal in many jurisdictions. There are at least a few states that require 2 party consent to a recording of a phone call. There are some 1 party consent states. Not sure about the ratio... Not sure what how it'd pan out across state line phone calls.

I thought that works wherein you inform someone at the beginning of the call so they have the chance to "opt out" (by hanging up)? Like how all support calls go.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#145
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’d be my read too. You can definitely be “too clever.” Laws aren’t like computer code. They’re interpreted by humans. And, if you’re “too cute” and violate the spirit of the law, you can quickly find yourself on the wrong side.

I think you're making a mistake. The primary intention behind warrant canaries isn't to shield you from legal retaliation, but to make it very hard to /legally/ force you to lie directly or by omission.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#146

>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.

> Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our network at our sole discretion. By political pressure they mean pressure from a political entity, that is, a government. That's what I'm assuming anyways, I'd love for a Cloudflare representative to confirm.

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#147

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?

It's difficult to imagine how this could be implemented in practice without automation. Stopping an automatic process seems more like action than inaction. With a site-wide canary, an person updates the document and asks legal to confirm that the new version is accurate - the update isn't automatic.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#148
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> falsely updating the canary to be acting in bad faith. I would consider it to be morally negative. I consider it to be of the same kind as the other examples I gave of acting in bad faith. Except that in the case of the canary, there might be the very real threat of violence or jail time for you or your loved ones. If it were me, I can see a world where I would do things I think are morally negative if it keeps me…

> might be the very real threat of violence or jail time for you or your loved ones I mean, hypothetically there could be. But in the real world, in some countries, you can be fairly sure that the rule of law will be followed.

Just take a look at this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

And these are just the ones we know about, and the page only pertains to experimentation.

You have to give some consideration to what "legal" even means when you're dealing with a government.

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#149

Would a central source for warrant canaries be helpful? Like one place where you can find all those individual warrant canaries from companies you care about...

https://canarywatch.org/ does essentially this. Crap: just noticed they stopped updating it.

even the server is not reachable for me anymore.. maybe crowdsource a new website?

Re: Cloudflare expands its government warrant canaries

#150
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> falsely updating the canary to be acting in bad faith. I would consider it to be morally negative. I consider it to be of the same kind as the other examples I gave of acting in bad faith. Except that in the case of the canary, there might be the very real threat of violence or jail time for you or your loved ones. If it were me, I can see a world where I would do things I think are morally negative if it keeps me…

> might be the very real threat of violence or jail time for you or your loved ones I mean, hypothetically there could be. But in the real world, in some countries, you can be fairly sure that the rule of law will be followed.

> But in the real world, in some countries, you can be fairly sure that the rule of law will be followed

I think it's fairly clear we're talking about the US, and in this case everything is a secret. We have no idea what will happen, or if anything has happened in the past.

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