I just don't see a court or a judge upholding a "cute" or "technical" workaround for something like this. Haven't there been rulings in the past where these aren't valid, ie just like the article above once you do get NSL's etc you must take them down or be at risk of non compilance?

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 tough thing to imagine - certainly on any continued basis.

Even in that situation, how will they force a swiss national to update the swiss location ? There's no jurisdiction there.

I don't see it as a technical workaround at all - it is completely non-technical. Can the government compel my speech ? Can the government compel me to make false statements ?

These are interesting questions, but I'm not at all sure the answer is not 'yes' to both of them, under the right circumstances.

The Fifth Amendment would not seem to imply (there's no criminal proceeding, and not necessarily any risk of self-incrimination) and the First Amendment, while applicable, would not necessarily prevent such a thing, in my estimation, if the circumstances were (in the government's estimation) sufficiently dire.

Alternatively, in some cases the USG could simply seize the domain name and/or server and serve up any content they wanted. See, e.g., Playpen. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/after-fbi-briefly... Though presumably they could not do this if the site or service operator were not also implicated in some form of illegal activity.

That may be true, but it would remove any moral ambiguity for me and make it easy for me to stick to my principle. If a judge orders me to make a false public statement, I'll disobey, and accept the consequences. No further justification is needed.

What sufficiently dire circumstance can there be where a government would have the right to compel speech?

I think the 13th amendment would come into play here as well.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/compell...

"national security"

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 NSL vs removing the canary is the reliance on some 'technical workaround' where the removal of information is not considered speech and/or doesn't divulge the information.

The judge is not going to tell you that you have to lie to keep the information up. But they may tell you that if you break the law, by divulging (through whatever means) that you have received an NSL, that you will receive the appropriate punishment.

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.

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.

By compelling you to lie? When and where was that "pretty well established"?

As far as I'm aware, this hasn't been tested in court. However, given that courts have been pretty silent on the idea of secret laws and compulsory silences, if it did get there, I'd be shocked that courts didn't rule this way.

Maybe that's what happened here. That would be highly dismaying.