ISPs providing "warrant canaries"

Justin justin-cypherpunks at soze.net
Sat May 20 14:25:50 PDT 2006


On 2006-05-20T13:30:53-0700, Steve Schear wrote:
> At 06:44 AM 5/16/2006, Jason Arnaute wrote:
> >Someone wrote here in the recent past about libraries
> >bypassing secret warrants by updating their boards
> >every X days/months with a "nobody has served us a
> >secret warrant" type message.
> 
> That might have been me.  I did post about apparently legal ways to 
> circumvent such secret warrants but I did not use a BB method but rather 
> provide a service where clients can request if a warrant has been served on 
> the library or ISP for their account or any account.  The service provider 
> is free to reply if no warrant has been received but is muzzled if one has. 
> This failure to reply, which is not a positive action, is what reveals the 
> warrant.  rsync's approach appears consistent with mine.

I think this is entirely too clever, and while I don't agree with
sneak-and-peak warrants in general, as long as they exist, these
countermeasures clearly violate the non-disclosure terms.

A "warrant canary" does in fact disclose sneak-and-peak warrant service.
Anyone arguing otherwise must rely on some limited, naive definition of
"disclose."  Not even Webster's, the clearinghouse of shallow and narrow
definitions, defines "disclose" as "communicate something to something
through positive action."

Does anyone have a link to a sample sneak-and-peak warrant no-disclosure
clause?

-- 
The six phases of a project:
I. Enthusiasm.          IV. Search for the Guilty.
II. Disillusionment.    V. Punishment of the Innocent.
III. Panic.            VI. Praise & Honor for the Nonparticipants.





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