There was a HN discussion about this two months ago [1]. The general consensus seemed to be that a court would not take the same kind of philosophical and logical approach that most HN types use, and would classify a failure to update the canary as effectively a communication that a NSL has been received. Since the courts only care about the facts that communication is occurring and that the court prohibited it, contempt of court would be the most likely result.

TL;DR: Judges don't philosophise about specific methods for circumventing their intentions.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5871541

After reading the thread the conclusion seemed to be that courts can not order you to lie, but may try to hold you in contempt of court for failing to update your canary.

If all actions but the one the government wants are ment with punishment then it is functionally equivalent to ordering/mandating/requiring a specific action.

If there is precedence for punishing all but the course of action desired by the government I would be interested. If there is legal precedence for ordering/mandating/requiring an action being different form punishing all but the desired action I would also be interested in knowing.

I am going to read the thread now do you know if any court cases were mentioned that set precedence for requiring someone to lie to their customers?

I am definitely interested in any court cases that set a precedence for ordering/mandating/require lying.

They have in the past - there are definitely situations where you are required to lie, for example, when working on classified materials or covert operations.

Slightly different, that is an operative agreeing to be an operative with up front knowledge of what it entails. So the person lying has agreed to lie before being given the information or a mission. If you know a case where a person has been prosecuted for not lying rather then breaking an agreement I would still be interested.

I am not sure what I think about your scenario off the top of my head but I do consider it different.

You could choose to take a job where you are required to lie, but no-one can force you to take such a job.

The Military Selective Service Act disagrees with you.

You couldn't be conscripted in private and compelled to lie.

Well, there is one last piece, and that is the geographically disparate canaries that we maintain.

The question is not "can a US court compel XYZ US citizen to lie", it is "can a US court compel XYZ swiss citizen to lie".

So you should take note, of course, if our warrant canary ceases to update. You should also take note if the US one updates but the swiss (or Hong Kong) one does not ...

This is made easier as a local warrant canary is available to all account holders in their /tmp dir ...

ssh [email protected] tail -200 /tmp/canary.txt

Cheers!