Comment by latexr
15 days ago
Which is exactly why I’m making this point. If no government had requested a backdoor, they could’ve simply answered “no”. When you have to weight your words, it means you’re not at liberty to say whatever you want. That is itself a signal, and why warrant canaries are a thing.
Simply answering "no" when that's the truth could be illegal too. The ability to say no creates the ability to say yes as well. If I ask Apple whether they got an order and they say "no", then a year later they say "we cannot confirm nor deny", well then that's a yes.
Kinda depends on judicial interpretations of free speech, but that's how warrant canaries work. Are warrant canaries legal in the UK? They seem to be in the US but idk how well established that is.
That concept has always sounded like tech people trying to hack the law without the proper real-world legal knowledge, IMO.
Bruce Schneier wrote in a blog post that "[p]ersonally, I have never believed [warrant canaries] would work. It relies on the fact that a prohibition against speaking doesn't prevent someone from not speaking. But courts generally aren't impressed by this sort of thing, and I can easily imagine a secret warrant that includes a prohibition against triggering the warrant canary.
Lots of similar discussion on HN already, e.g. in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5871541.
You're right to point out how carefully worded these statements are. But I suspect it's rare for companies of Google's status to not have been asked for a backdoor. It's not really an informative question to ask Google.
Of course they were asked. That doesn’t matter, my point is the author is assuming more from the reply than what was said.
It’s like if you conspired with your brother to steal from the cookie jar. He stole the cookies while you distracted your parents. Later on your mother reports to your father:
> When asked whether they stole from the cookie jar, derbOac did not provide a direct answer but suggested they didn’t didn’t know who did it: "I did not see anyone removing cookies from the jar," they stated.
Your statement is factually correct, but it doesn’t say what your mother concluded.
Can you elaborate on why you say it is not informative?
My guess is Google, Microsoft, Signal, Apple, Cloudfare, etc etc etc have all been asked if they could make backdoors. I expect they have all been asked. It's not the same as asking if they have made a backdoor.
So I think a journalist asking an organization like Google if they've been asked isn't really informative, because they almost certainly have been.
I'm not sure how it's relevant other than to say an answer from Google's response might seem oblique, but they're also being asked obliquely and that colors how you might interpret their response.
Presumably because the answer is "of course yes".