Warrant canaries are a response to government orders that prevent transparent compliance reporting. In the US at least the government can order you to not reve

Warrant canaries are a response to government orders that prevent transparent compliance reporting. In the US at least the government can order you to not reveal the existence of a warrant. They cannot (in theory) compel you to state that you have not received any such warrants. Thus the canary. I agree that being able to report on these activities transparently, even if it is done with a delay, would be preferable. But my understanding is that to accomplish that would require legislative changes to the current system.