Except all those are examples of acting in bad faith. The question at hand here is whether the government can compel you to keep the canary in place after a search/siezure.

The only bad faith might be using warrant canaries knowing that they may still be able to be compelled legally to comply.

"The question at hand here is whether the government can compel you to keep the canary in place after a search/siezure."

I personally (which is the only viewpoint that matters here) would consider falsely updating the canary to be acting in bad faith. I would consider it to be morally negative. I consider it to be of the same kind as the other examples I gave of acting in bad faith.

YMMV.

> falsely updating the canary to be acting in bad faith. I would consider it to be morally negative. I consider it to be of the same kind as the other examples I gave of acting in bad faith.

Except that in the case of the canary, there might be the very real threat of violence or jail time for you or your loved ones.

If it were me, I can see a world where I would do things I think are morally negative if it keeps me and my loves ones alive and out of jail, and I think many other people are the same.

> might be the very real threat of violence or jail time for you or your loved ones

I mean, hypothetically there could be. But in the real world, in some countries, you can be fairly sure that the rule of law will be followed.

Just take a look at this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

And these are just the ones we know about, and the page only pertains to experimentation.

You have to give some consideration to what "legal" even means when you're dealing with a government.

The last instance on that page occurred in the early 1970s. I never claimed the past was free of bad events. I said, prospectively, that a person could be relatively sure the rule of law would be followed on the subject of warrant canaries, in some countries.

> But in the real world, in some countries, you can be fairly sure that the rule of law will be followed

I think it's fairly clear we're talking about the US, and in this case everything is a secret. We have no idea what will happen, or if anything has happened in the past.

Obviously I can't prove the nonexistence of secret proceedings where people have been made to lie to the public. This is ever the domain of conspiracy theorists, because you can never really prove that no such thing has happened, to say nothing of proving it won't. Proving non-existence in general is a nearly impossible problem in the real world. But I think it's unlikely. People can feel free to let their irrational fears dominate their behavior if they want.

Wow, so you are saying you will go to jail if given the choice between that and not updating your warrant canary? Brava, but talk is cheap.

Of course they could compel you to keep it, the CIA has overthrown countries, performed psychological experiments on unwilling US citizens, they've sold crack and smuggled arms against Congress's wishes, the list goes on. There is nothing stopping a part of the US government from compelling a company to keep a warrant canary.

But that doesn't mean canaries are useless, they're just not protective if the US government has deemed it important enough to force it.

Love what you folks do. Keep up the hard work!