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As discussed in a previous HN thread, the courts might still see this as a notice that a warrant has been served, despite it being "said through not saying." H

As discussed in a previous HN thread, the courts might still see this as a notice that a warrant has been served, despite it being "said through not saying." Has rsync.net had the opportunity to see these arguments play out?

AnIrishDuck 13y ago
I really doubt this would play out well in court. As said before, judges take a dim view of legal "tricks" like this. They won't be sympathetic to you putting yourself in a quandary where you're essentially requiring yourself to issue false statements. The order they issue will force you to update the canary, as refusing to would disclose the existence of the warrant.
- rsync 13y ago
  Yes, but at the very least it elevates the process out of a simple rubber stamp court order. One way or another, we'd get our "day in court", even if you never hear about it, and that's worth something. We are more optimistic about how such things would play out, but even in that worst case scenario, there's some value in slowing things down and forcing that review.
  - AnIrishDuck 13y ago
    I don't think we know enough about how the FISC works to jump to that conclusion. I'd say let us know how it works out, but...
  - edwintorok 13y ago
    Could you revoke the public key used to sign these messages (i.e. publish revocation cert to keyservers) when you get a warrant served? That way they won't be able to force you to sign anything with that key anymore, all you can do is create a new key, but the timestamp on that key will make it obvious that something happened on that day.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      Or you could just publish a notification that you got a warrant. Yes, it's forbidden, but if the court has anything approaching smarts (and most do, actually) it's not any more forbidden than what you're suggesting and equally irrevocable.
rsync 13y ago
No, we haven't, and that was the reasoning behind the canary being posted on the individual storage arrays (not just individual foreign locations, but each individual storage array). As of today, I know of no other firm running a warrant canary, and I don't think any of the librarians[1] were ever challenged with theirs. As with all of this, it is uncharted. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
- mythz 13y ago
  I think you should try to come up with a url convention that other sites can adopt similar to /favicon.ico This is too deep to be followed: /resources/notices/canary.txt What about something like /warrant-canary.txt ?

AnIrishDuck 13y ago

I really doubt this would play out well in court. As said before, judges take a dim view of legal "tricks" like this. They won't be sympathetic to you putting yourself in a quandary where you're essentially requiring yourself to issue false statements. The order they issue will force you to update the canary, as refusing to would disclose the existence of the warrant.

rsync 13y ago
Yes, but at the very least it elevates the process out of a simple rubber stamp court order. One way or another, we'd get our "day in court", even if you never hear about it, and that's worth something. We are more optimistic about how such things would play out, but even in that worst case scenario, there's some value in slowing things down and forcing that review.
- AnIrishDuck 13y ago
  I don't think we know enough about how the FISC works to jump to that conclusion. I'd say let us know how it works out, but...
- edwintorok 13y ago
  Could you revoke the public key used to sign these messages (i.e. publish revocation cert to keyservers) when you get a warrant served? That way they won't be able to force you to sign anything with that key anymore, all you can do is create a new key, but the timestamp on that key will make it obvious that something happened on that day.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    Or you could just publish a notification that you got a warrant. Yes, it's forbidden, but if the court has anything approaching smarts (and most do, actually) it's not any more forbidden than what you're suggesting and equally irrevocable.

rsync 13y ago

No, we haven't, and that was the reasoning behind the canary being posted on the individual storage arrays (not just individual foreign locations, but each individual storage array). As of today, I know of no other firm running a warrant canary, and I don't think any of the librarians[1] were ever challenged with theirs. As with all of this, it is uncharted. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

mythz 13y ago
I think you should try to come up with a url convention that other sites can adopt similar to /favicon.ico This is too deep to be followed: /resources/notices/canary.txt What about something like /warrant-canary.txt ?