> 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.