[dvdplm]

If a government agency issues a secret warrant, doesn’t that imply rsync.net has to provide a valid canary at the right time as well? I don’t get how this is useful.

[dannyw]

The Supreme Court has ruled that compelled speech (forcing someone to say something) is almost always a clear cut violation of the first amendment.

There is no known case of US charging someone over a warrant canary.

There have been plenty of warrant canaries that have ceased to be updated - e.g. Reddit, and more recently, Storj.

[funOtter]

Cases where compelled speech has been forced by the courts:

1. Forcing registered sex offenders to alert people in their neighborhood

2. Correcting misstatements

[jcranmer]

This is a colorable argument, but I think it's ultimately a pretty poor argument:

First, freedom from compelled speech is not an inherently stronger (or weaker) freedom than freedom of speech. If the government can prevent you from saying something, then it can almost certainly prevent you from saying it by not not saying it.

Second, national security is one of the most powerful legal trump cards in practice. The government saying that something is necessary for national security will be treated as fact by the court, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary.

Third, the purpose of freedom of speech is to protect freedom of expression. Speech that isn't expressive in nature has a much lower bar to clear for the government to be able to restrict it. Warrant canaries strike me as essentially commercial speech, which the government has pretty wide latitude to regulate.

[tzs]

That would apply (probably) if the government put you under a gag order and ordered you to keep updating your warrant canary.

But what if they just put you under a gag order, and then when you stop updating the warrant canary they charge you with violating the gag order? Would that still fall under the compelled speech cases?

[mananaysiempre]

Not a lawyer, but IIRC the theory was that generally speaking the bar for compelling you to lie is higher than that for compelling you to stay silent, even when those are equivalent information-theoretically. It’s not clear if the legal exploit of a warrant canary has ever been tested in court.

[ncallaway]

I don’t think so. I think there’s a pretty significant legal difference between ordering someone not to say something, and ordering them to specifically publicly say something that’s false.

The former has been tested and is (for some reason) within the bounds of the first amendment. While forcing someone to publicly say something false almost certainly is outside the bounds of the first amendment.

[jusssi]

If they're brave enough, they'll render themselves unable to sign the canary with the key they previously used (by "accidently" destroying it), and accept whatever punishment is headed their way because of that.

[rsync]

Let us please be clear: rsync.net is a real company. We have a board of directors. We have outside advisors and legal counsel. We have shareholders.

Did we, in fact, create a poison pill provision in 2006 with regard to legal service, etc., ? Yes, we did.

Will this be a wild west data caper with dramatic conclusions and brave, desperate actions ? No, it won't be.

If there's one thing you should know about rsync.net it's that it's a very boring company. We're going to keep it that way.

[brookst]

Switching from good faith legal dispute to bad faith technical argument and lying seems like a questionable strategy.

[javajosh]

Assuming people take the canary seriously, this is an interesting case where deleting one file is equivalent to shutting down the company.

[_Algernon_]

Can courts compel people to enter passwords? How is forcing a signature with a specific GPG key different?

If worst comes to worst, say "Sorry bro, lost the key in a boating accident, nothing I can do".