Re:Silent Circle canary missing declaration?
by declan on Saturday March 07, 2015 @04:29PM
(#9163184)
You are correct that U.S. policy is in some ways broken, but incorrect in assuming that warrant canaries serve no purpose or firms can be compelled to lie. The far better arguments are that such an order would be unconstitutional -- look at the NSL 1A litigation for a good parallel.
That's why CanaryWatch.org is run by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, NYU's Technology Law & Policy Clinic, and the Calyx Institute. I moderated an event at HOPE X last year with Nick from Calyx (and Ladar from LavaBit) and they have spent quite a bit of time thinking through this.
[...] it does not prevent them from using force to coerce us to produce false declarations [...]
so if the declaration is present it's still not guaranteed that no gag order was issued. Looks to me like a desperate attempt to patch a broken system (US policy/law). You could even go that far to assume that it is only a marketing stunt as such statements have no other value otherwise.