Hello, On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 08:10:28PM +0000, Mike Jones wrote: > If I was a lawyer I could probably word it in a way that forced you to > issue a press release saying that you were shutting down your canary > due to it being a pointless waste of resources with no legal validity.
I'm not any sort of lawyer but if I was the government's lawyer then I would do what the government typically does in the face of such antics which is to just unhelpfully reiterate the law to people, so that they have no idea what will happen without getting expensive legal advice and/or just going for it. Expecting them to do something useful like actually tell you what to do seems wildly optimistic, even if the "what to do" would be something unpalatable. I have been asked several times by customers to implement a warrant canary but have only gone so far as to discuss it informally with a barrister who was helping me with something else at the time (late 2010, so at the time more to do with Security Service Act, Counter Terrorism Act and Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, but broadly just about secret warrants). The key thing that warrant canaries seem to rely on is that the government can't force you to make a false statement (by making you continue to update your canary even after receiving a warrant that should stop you). However, I suggested that the government would not force you to lie, they would just reiterate your obligations under the law and leave you to respond in whatever way you saw fit. Which may be to lie and continue updating your canary if your legal advice was that that was the safest thing to do, but that would be your choice, not something the government ever brought up. Or you could take a stand and hope that your actions wouldn't get you prosecuted. Point being that if you were prosecuted you might find it hard to rely on, "you can't force me to make a false statement" as a defence. The barrister agreed that was a plausible turn of events but of course to provide more comprehensive advice they'd want paying to put the time in to research it. That was enough for me to conclude that it wasn't something I'd want to start doing in case I found myself in the position of having to choose between lying, voluntarily just shutting up shop immediately, or going to prison. Since then I have heard people (non-lawyers) in the industry speak of more elaborate wheezes like putting the update of the canary into the contract so not updating it would be a breach of contract, which you would argue that you can't be forced to do. But it all just seems like puffery and marketing until someone gets some proper advice that they can share, and then maybe still not until it gets tested in court. And I can't afford that. Cheers, Andy
