Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alright, I'll leave the thread.
Is your resumé ready?
God I hope so. It's a pretty fun time to be Stavros and on the market looking for crypto work.
Silent Circle removes warrant canary
131–140 of 197 posts
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> well you draw your own conclusions. Yes, that's the point: If someone tells you not to provide the information needed to draw those conclusions, there may be consequences for providing that information.
That's like me telling you that you can't make this post that you've already made. I can tell you not to make any further posts, but this one already exists.
No, it's like telling me that I need to continue making posts, or I will be fined. This may not be pleasant, but it's certainly something that the government can do.
It's pretty well established that they're legally allowed to prevent me from telling people that I am in a certain state. It's not a stretch that prearranged signals fall under that.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I speak for myself, and not the company. As soon as you said "I work for that company", you speak for them, whether you like it or not and no amount of disclaiming changes that in the mind of the reader. Additionally, you went on to explain things that only someone that works there would know, so you are explicitly speaking for the company. I'd normally recommend that an employee delete such a post, perhaps explainin…
Eh, I'm not so sure he's endangering anything. He's only staking his personal reputation, that's what "I only speak for myself" means. If it comes out that the company does what he says he doesn't see them do, then hes only burning himself; not the company. Worst case scenario he gets fired and someone else will hire him. It isn't like he works for the NSA. Good software developers are hard to find and bleeding infor…
That's true. The only way that he or his company could truly be hurt is if Silent Circle did get a NSL and he admitted to it publicly.
If they got a NSL and he lied about it, no harm will come to him. Or if he's telling the truth, obviously.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't know that. Icing on the cake of my claim. Not even me having anything against SEAL's: two in my family with one decorated. I just have to assume their loyalty will lead them to side with military or intelligence over Constitutional principles. It would be different if code was all open, jurisdiction + servers non-US, and review by mutually-suspicious parties. Then I could focus on product more than the subvers…
I actually know him through a close personal friend. He's not the type to trust the government for anything which is why he created the product in the first place. That being said, he's not longer calling the shots so who knows now?
If so, then good for him. We cant verify it. If true, I respect the combo of SEAL and serving Constitution with privacy tech.
Regarding calling shots, yeah who knows. Just reinforces worries in this space though. Uncertainty that is.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#135I work for silent circle, as a backend developer. I speak for myself, and not the company. As far as I know (and, sure, I may not know, although if someone wanted something from the server I'm one of a few guys that could get it), we haven't received any letters. What makes me even more confident, though, is the fact that there really isn't much data to give. All we have is some ciphertexts for attachments, and messa…
Couldn't an NSL force the company to start retaining that information though? You may not have past data but you can certainly collect future information.
Yes, they can try to compel you to do literally anything. Remember they tried to get Lavabit's SSL certs. Either you comply or fight it in secret court.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#136Current 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…
Traditional warrant canaries are issued regularly, just as you described it.
It would be fantastic to get more granular, at the account-level. That would be a cool differentiator for these hardcore privacy/security-oriented companies.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#137Earlier 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." 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 N…
Well, as far as _we_ know this hasn't been tested. After all, it is a _secret_ court! That's the whole problem!
Maybe that's what happened here. That would be highly dismaying.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#138Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I speak for myself, and not the company. As soon as you said "I work for that company", you speak for them, whether you like it or not and no amount of disclaiming changes that in the mind of the reader. Additionally, you went on to explain things that only someone that works there would know, so you are explicitly speaking for the company. I'd normally recommend that an employee delete such a post, perhaps explainin…
I'm not sure what the point of this comment is, but want to chime in to say I'm always happy when people directly connected to stories on HN take the time to shed what light they can on them. I'm kind of repelled by the instinct we have to tear those people down.
I'm kind of repelled by the instinct we have to tear those people down.
Sorry you took it that way. Myself, I'd hate to see our desire for gossip overrule wishing to avoid folks having a difficult conversation with their manager. Maybe not in this case, but if enough people from various companies start posting out of turn on public forums when they as individuals don't know the whole story, someone's going to wake up to a bad day. It's one thing to comment on "MSFT Announces new, cool widget thingy": "I worked on that, and what a long road we've travelled!" Quite another when the headline is "Google writes down $4 billion on stupid acquisition", and "I work Google, but I only speak for myself, and I think..." Any whiff of controversy and I'd say just stay out of it.
But it's just advice, do what you like with it, including ignore it.
Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary
#140I'm not sure what usefulness removing the warrant canary would be without receiving an NSL.. Are you suggesting that your company acts in bad practice regarding warrant canaries? You really shouldn't be playing PR for your company unless that's your job.
These kinds of comments are explicitly off limits on HN. You can't accuse people of shilling, or of "playing PR", or otherwise commenting in bad faith. If you believe someone is doing that and have evidence , you mail hn@ycombinator.com and let them handle it. What you don't do is chase people off threads with accusations about it. Don't take my word for it. I'm just another commenter. Use the search box at the botto…
I was kind of disgusted with these initial comments, did not expect it to be so supported in this community. If the company was OK with this, I'm glad they allowed an employee to be open, honest and personal about their comments regarding their employers in public.
Some wouldn't want you to talk to media at all. Silent Circle's employees have been very active on HN in the past regarding their work and their employer, I hope not to see similar responses to what I've seen in this thread earlier on in the future.
Sorry, slightly offtopic to the original thread.