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A comment on Warrant Canary. Parent comment

Re:Warrant Canary by sxp on Thursday June 13, 2013 @01:39AM (#5872502)
>A judge will see right through this if it's tried and probably impose contempt of court. If one were to try something like this it would be essential to broaden the scope enough that it couldn't be used to reference a specific gag order.

[citation needed]

Has there been a case where the judge forced a civilian to lie?

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Re:Warrant Canary by pekk on Thursday June 13, 2013 @02:19AM (#5872592)
Contempt for communicating a message (by whatever means) is not the same as forcing to lie.
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Re:Warrant Canary by mokus on Thursday June 13, 2013 @03:09AM (#5872701)
Does it make any difference that at the time the communication was committed to, the gag order was not in effect?
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Re:Warrant Canary by mpyne on Thursday June 13, 2013 @09:41AM (#5873956)
Given that the whole point of the commitment to the communication was to evade a future gag order, I'm not sure what to tell you. It does sound like immovable object meets irresistable force, but it's a Catch-22 of the "cypherpunk's" own making.

The court can't compel you to lie. The court can compel you to not communicate about a gag order, and enforce that with contempt of court. So if you don't choose to "lie" (since again, we all understand the purpose of the communication is not as a factual statement but rather to signal whether a gag order is received) they can still hold you accountable for it.

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