4 ms·
Since the main purpose of the warrant canary is to be able to inform the public of being served one if they are gagged, I indeed think non-gagging warrants aren
by twiss 4y ago
Since the main purpose of the warrant canary is to be able to inform the public of being served one if they are gagged, I indeed think non-gagging warrants aren't super relevant for them, but it also doesn't matter much that they are included: the next warrant canary can simply say "we got a routine warrant, asking for X information; no other warrants have been served". Whether that is then interesting or not is up to the public to decide.
In fact, if they didn't inform the public of regular warrants, only (indirectly, via the warrant canary) when they were gagged, it might incentivize the government to only serve regular warrants instead of NSLs, which surely isn't the intention.
If regular warrants happen often, I guess they could make a separate mechanism to inform the public about them, but I guess it doesn't, so far? In any case, if they aren't gagging, they wouldn't need a canary to inform the public about them.
- tptacek 4y agoOK, but now we're not "killing" the canary when we're served with a court order, we're training it to sing a different song. Part of the idea of a canary is that the simplicity of ceasing a continuous public assertion has more legal protections than simply violating a gag order would. At the point where you're logging warrants, you're not doing a canary, you're doing a transparency report. The transparency reports we read are, as I understand it, the product of negotiations between companies and the DOJ.
- twiss 4y agoSure. My assumption was that the "routine" warrants wouldn't have gag orders, but I might be wrong on that. But yeah, if it doesn't, the transparency report might be a better place to put it, and then it might make sense to make the warrant canary specific to warrants that aren't / can't be in there for one reason or another (gag orders or milder forms of coercion / negotiations). If they are gagging, multiple warrant canaries might work, but I think it becomes harder to argue that you aren't communicating anything if you stop publishing one but still publish the others. Taken to the extreme, you could have many canaries, for example one for every user ("there has been no warrant for your information"), and users might even appreciate that, but stopping with publishing a specific subset of them can communicate a lot of information. It also removes some of the plausible deniability ("maybe they just forgot to update the warrant canary") that comes with having only one, I think.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rsync 4y agoThis is correct. See my response to your parent, upthread. The canary already contains a list of all warrants we have ever received - it just so happens that list is zero items long.
- tptacek 4y agoCan you relate to us the legal opinions you've gotten about using your "canary" as a transparency log?
- rsync 4y agoI would characterize the legal opinions we have received as "wildly divergent". Some of the best discussion and counsel I have had took place during the EFF Canary Summit which was held at NYU in 2014. These disussions took place under Chatham House Rules, however, so I can't attribute it to anyone. Again, best characterized as "wildly divergent". Of note: rsync.net is, to a layperson, best described as a virtual safe deposit box. There are no abilities to publish, share or work collaboratively on data. In addition, an rsync.net account is relatively expensive. The kinds of activities that might attract a NSL or gagged order are naturally repulsed by these structural factors. It's also a good filtering mechanism for non-technical clients, but I'm drifting off-topic now ...