Comment by randallsquared
4 months ago
From the article:
> Several experts described the mechanism as a “clever” workaround that could comply with the letter of the law but not its spirit.
It's not clear to me how it could comply with the letter of the law, but evidently at least some legal experts think it can? That uncertainty is probably how it made it past the legal teams in the first place.
Warrant canary depends on agreed upon inaction, which shields it somewhat. You cannot exactly compel speech by a gag order.
This, being an active process, if found out, is violating a gag order by direct action.
Warrant canaries depend on action, the removal or altering of the canary document. It’s too clever but no more clever than what Israel is requiring here.
the canary notification method is a lack of updates, not a specific update.
you update your canary to say that nothing has changed, at a known cadence.
if you ever dont make the update, readers know that the canary has expired, and so you have been served a gag order warrant.
changing or removing the canary in response to a warrant is illegal. not changing it is legal.
for an equivalent cloudwatch setup, its checking the flag for "alarm when there's no points"
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>Warrant canaries depend on action, the removal or altering of the canary document.
No, they can simply not publish a warrant canary in the future, which will tip people off if they've been publishing it regularly in the past.
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Ah, I think I get it. Violating the spirit of a law can be, often is, enough to get you convicted of a crime. Arguably more often than violating the letter of the law but not it's spirit.
However, if a judge dodesn't want to find someone guilty, "not violating the letter of the law" can provide a fig leaf for the friendly judge.
When those experts are not named one could wonder if they even exist. Why would a journalist not reveal the name of an expert who is consulting on a matter of law?
Not to get super conspiratorial, but I think this is almost certainly a weasel statement simply to avoid directly accusing Israel/google/amazon of breaking the law.
I can't imagine any "legal expert" dumb enough to say you can violate a gag order if you use numbers instead of words.
In all likelihood there's just language like "to the extent permitted by law", which The Guardian isn't telling us about. Even if they didn't write that explicitly, it's implied anyway - Israel knows any US court would void any provision requiring Google/Amazon to commit criminal acts (illegality doctrine). It's also not really possible for Israel to be break laws of foreign states, since it's not bound by them in the first place.