Legality of warrant canaries
Griffin Boyce
griffin at cryptolab.net
Fri Oct 17 11:06:48 PDT 2014
Hey all,
There's been a lot of discussion around warrant canaries lately, and I
just want to pipe in with my experience.
Back in 2012, I talked to my attorney about setting up a warrant
canary or a dead man's switch -- which he pointed out would have the
same legal repercussions as just releasing the gagged warrant/NSL. Why?
Because they are frequently phrased in such a way that if you do or
fail to do a thing to somehow make it known, then you've violated the
order. You're in just as much trouble if you take out a billboard or
tweet a scan of the order or use pantomime or comment out a warrant
canary.
The only difference is that there *might* be plausible deniability if
you tell your partner "something happened at work today and I can't tell
you what it is" [1], whereas you have *no* ability to deny anything if
you remove a publicized warrant canary from a website. I'm not saying
don't do it, but maybe talk to a lawyer first.
~Griffin
[1]
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/what-its-like-to-get-a-national-security-letter
--
"I believe that usability is a security concern; systems that do
not pay close attention to the human interaction factors involved
risk failing to provide security by failing to attract users."
~Len Sassaman
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