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Comment by signed0

12 years ago

Perhaps they could be sued either way. If a company states on their website that "We do not do X", and then starts doing X they are left with two choices, leaving a false message up or taking it down.

If they leave it up, and the truth eventually comes out, could they be sued for misleading their shareholders?

If they take it down does that open them up to being sued by the government?

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signed0

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sdoowpilihp  12 years ago

You are correct that a company could be sued for other things, such as lying. My point is that a warrant canary _does_ disclose information; specifically through implication. I am sure that in a court of law, given that an implication made by a warrant canary is reasonably obvious, it could be argued that the party in question was indeed attempting to disclose information prohibited by the gag order, and as such, is in breach of the gag order.

  • chii  12 years ago

    but its a deniable form of disclosure - you could argue that the ISP is trying to adhere to the gag order by lying to the customer that there hasn't been any subpoenas.

    What the customer gets out of that lie is none of the concern of the ISP.

    • sdoowpilihp  12 years ago

      There is an aspect of deniability though it's weak, especially with something that is both updated at regular time intervals, and was otherwise reliably updated.

      Maybe a better solution would be a system that generated an indicator with only a certain level of assurance that it is accurate, and have it err on the side of NOT giving false positives. This would have a built in level of deniability.

      2 replies →

eli  12 years ago

National Security Letters grant the recipient immunity from civil lawsuits if you comply in good faith. They think of everything!