Fwd: [whispersystems] Warrant Canary - Gag order in place right now?
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Moxie Marlinspike <moxie@thoughtcrime.org> Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 16:27:04 -0700 Subject: Re: [whispersystems] Warrant Canary - Gag order in place right now? To: whispersystems@lists.riseup.net On 10/16/2014 03:13 PM, Advocatus Diaboli wrote:
I've been watching the development of TextSecure and other OWS apps for a while, and among other things wondered why there is no warrant canary.
20 Minutes ago, a comment was posted in the following issue - and promptly deleted again 5 Minutes ago:
As far as I can tell, nothing was deleted, you're just looking at the wrong issue: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/issues/34
It has been deleted by either the author or an OWS administrator. It stated that, unlike moxie says in the issue, the EFF's lawyers obviously are of the opinion that warrant canarys do work:
There's a huge difference between the EFF taking a public position on an untested legal concept and a lawyer providing council to a client. Of course the EFF is going to advocate them, their job is to take that position. Whether warrant canaries will work or not is not my area of expertise. However, I don't want to experiment with them for two reasons: 1) Lawyers who provide us council have told us it's very likely they won't work. I don't want to advertise something that could be interpreted as an assurance which is actually false if for some reason it ever came down to that. 2) It's not the hill I want to die on. We're not well positioned to push the state of the art in legal policy or to be a test case. It's not what we're good at, and honestly the point of our work is to make those kind of questions irrelevant by not having any data to provide. That's the envelope that we *are* interested in pushing.
If this would be the case, they should not to put up a warrant canary (because it would be lying), and they would also not be able to explain why they cannot publish a warrant canary (because that would violate the gag order). The only thing left do would be to find excuses why no warrant canary is being put up and trying to avoid public attention to the topic. Which is exactly what's happening.
You left out the part about the lizard people.
So please, Moxie, if this is *not* the case, state on this mailinglist, publicly and in clear terms, that OWS or the server admins did not yet receive a subpoena / warrant / gag order related to any OWS app or service.
We have never received a subpoena, warrant, or gag order related to any OWS app or service. Now can we go back to writing software? - moxie -- http://www.thoughtcrime.org
On Fri, Oct 17, 2014, at 12:35 AM, coderman wrote:
Whether warrant canaries will work or not is not my area of expertise. However, I don't want to experiment with them for two reasons:
1) Lawyers who provide us council have told us it's very likely they won't work. I don't want to advertise something that could be interpreted as an assurance which is actually false if for some reason it ever came down to that.
2) It's not the hill I want to die on. We're not well positioned to push the state of the art in legal policy or to be a test case. It's not what we're good at, and honestly the point of our work is to make those kind of questions irrelevant by not having any data to provide. That's the envelope that we *are* interested in pushing.
I think that there are a number of companies who would like to use a warrant canary to protect their users but also do not want to be a guinea pig of the courts. Even Apple, which had the biggest market cap in the world so could afford to take on this fight, bowed down and removed their warrant canary recently. Sadly, until someone with a set of big brass ones goes all guns blazing to specifically set precedent, everyone is going to sit on the sidelines on this issue. I guess the only real work around would be to relocate the company (including all employees) to a more friendly jurisdiction. Alfie -- Alfie John alfiej@fastmail.fm
2014-10-17 11:26 GMT+02:00 Alfie John <alfiej@fastmail.fm>:
I guess the only real work around would be to relocate the company (including all employees) to a more friendly jurisdiction.
Somehow American's believe national is the new international. What was PirateAt40 doing in the US? Why, if you run The Silk Road, do you live in the US? All they had to do is disappear off the map for a while (say 5 to 10 years) (this means visiting somewhere remote, like China or Russia, hell, go to Finland for all I care, this is about not dropping hints in police hintboxes all the time; not running away), maybe reinvent themselves with a properly faked ID (maybe!), and, well, enjoy life in all the square meters not run by "We The People".
On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 10:26:25AM +0100, Alfie John wrote:
On Fri, Oct 17, 2014, at 12:35 AM, coderman wrote:
Whether warrant canaries will work or not is not my area of expertise. However, I don't want to experiment with them for two reasons:
1) Lawyers who provide us council have told us it's very likely they won't work. I don't want to advertise something that could be interpreted as an assurance which is actually false if for some reason it ever came down to that.
2) It's not the hill I want to die on. We're not well positioned to push the state of the art in legal policy or to be a test case. It's not what we're good at, and honestly the point of our work is to make those kind of questions irrelevant by not having any data to provide. That's the envelope that we *are* interested in pushing.
I think that there are a number of companies who would like to use a warrant canary to protect their users but also do not want to be a guinea pig of the courts. Even Apple, which had the biggest market cap in the world so could afford to take on this fight, bowed down and removed their warrant canary recently.
Sadly, until someone with a set of big brass ones goes all guns blazing to specifically set precedent, everyone is going to sit on the sidelines on this issue.
I guess the only real work around would be to relocate the company (including all employees) to a more friendly jurisdiction.
There is another option. First you get some idealistic laywers who are stuck with half a million in student loans they can't pay back and work out a warrant canary system and pay them equity in the company that will deploy it as a retainer. However, for this to work it requires **investors** and end users to buy the product(s) the company is going to sell that have warrant canaries. You might even be able to work out some sort of 'proof-of-retainer' block reward scheme on a new canarycoin so the lawyers defending the company can get tradeable coins, and cash them out to pay off the loans. All of this revolves around the business models. Figure that out and the legal jurisdiction is irrelevant, because if you have a good enough business model, you can buy the legislation you want.
On Oct 17, 2014 6:22 PM, "Troy Benjegerdes" <hozer@hozed.org> wrote:
All of this revolves around the business models. Figure that out and the legal jurisdiction is irrelevant, because if you have a good enough
business
model, you can buy the legislation you want.
Not many business models like that.
participants (4)
-
Alfie John -
coderman -
Lodewijk andré de la porte -
Troy Benjegerdes