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Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

"Can you comment on if you believe these to be actually effective? I don't see how when the USG says that you cannot divulge that you've received any type of NSL, they can easily say you must continue to act like you have in the past."

The entire basis of the warrant canary is that it's not simply asking me to stop doing something, but rather, a judge would have to order me to make false public statements. That's a tough thing to imagine - certainly on any continued basis.

Even in that situation, how will they force a swiss national to update the swiss location ? There's no jurisdiction there.

I don't see it as a technical workaround at all - it is completely non-technical. Can the government compel my speech ? Can the government compel me to make false statements ?

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> Can the government compel my speech ? Can the government compel me to make false statements ?

These are interesting questions, but I'm not at all sure the answer is not 'yes' to both of them, under the right circumstances.

The Fifth Amendment would not seem to imply (there's no criminal proceeding, and not necessarily any risk of self-incrimination) and the First Amendment, while applicable, would not necessarily prevent such a thing, in my estimation, if the circumstances were (in the government's estimation) sufficiently dire.

Alternatively, in some cases the USG could simply seize the domain name and/or server and serve up any content they wanted. See, e.g., Playpen. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/after-fbi-briefly... Though presumably they could not do this if the site or service operator were not also implicated in some form of illegal activity.

> These are interesting questions, but I'm not at all sure the answer is not 'yes' to both of them, under the right circumstances.

That may be true, but it would remove any moral ambiguity for me and make it easy for me to stick to my principle. If a judge orders me to make a false public statement, I'll disobey, and accept the consequences. No further justification is needed.

Freedom of speech entails the freedom to speak only your mind. No one has a valid claim to compel your speech.

What sufficiently dire circumstance can there be where a government would have the right to compel speech?

I think the 13th amendment would come into play here as well.

> What sufficiently dire circumstance can there be where a government would have the right to compel speech?

"national security"

At least in the US, there are certainly circumstances where the government can compel speech, though in most cases they can't. There is a lot of case law on the subject. It's mostly in the commercial realm (think cigarette labels) but not entirely (think Jehovah's Witness school children who don't want to salute the flag). I'm not aware of a compelled speech case balancing national security interests against first amendment interests as this would be.

Pardon? No one, Jehovah's Witness schoolchildren or otherwise, can be legally compelled to say the pledge of allegiance, stand for the national anthem, or salute the flag. If you know of an instance of this occurring the ACLU would like to hear from you. Or have the rules on this changed when I wasn't looking?

You're right on the law as it stands today, but the current law exists precisely because of a case about Jehovah's Witnesses being compelled to salute the flag in school.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/compell...

Can the government compel me to make false statements ?

In what scenario would the government need to compel you to make false statements?

The law is already that if you receive a NSL, then you are not allowed to divulge that you've received one. If you do, then you may be prosecuted for breaking the law.

In the scenario involving warrant canaries, the only difference between just outright saying you've received an NSL vs removing the canary is the reliance on some 'technical workaround' where the removal of information is not considered speech and/or doesn't divulge the information.

The judge is not going to tell you that you have to lie to keep the information up. But they may tell you that if you break the law, by divulging (through whatever means) that you have received an NSL, that you will receive the appropriate punishment.

The way I understand this, the canary will not be removed, it will just stop being updated. All it says is that, as of the date of the canary, no NSLs have been served. If you know the organization posts a new one monthly and you see it skipped a month, well you draw your own conclusions.

> well you draw your own conclusions.

Yes, that's the point: If someone tells you not to provide the information needed to draw those conclusions, there may be consequences for providing that information.

That's like me telling you that you can't make this post that you've already made. I can tell you not to make any further posts, but this one already exists.

No, it's like telling me that I need to continue making posts, or I will be fined. This may not be pleasant, but it's certainly something that the government can do.

It's pretty well established that they're legally allowed to prevent me from telling people that I am in a certain state. It's not a stretch that prearranged signals fall under that.

> It's pretty well established that they're legally allowed to prevent me from conveying a certain state -- ie, that I have received an NSL.

By compelling you to lie? When and where was that "pretty well established"?

By compelling you to avoid saying something. If you have a prearranged signal, you don't get to say "I'm just keeping my silence" any more: You are triggering a signal.

As far as I'm aware, this hasn't been tested in court. However, given that courts have been pretty silent on the idea of secret laws and compulsory silences, if it did get there, I'd be shocked that courts didn't rule this way.

If I already started a warrant canary, the only way you can compel that to not work is to compel me to continue posting. But you can only do that after right now, so you cannot possibly redact the canary itself. And you could only compel me to keep posting if you'd already served a warrant.

Well, as far as _we_ know this hasn't been tested. After all, it is a _secret_ court! That's the whole problem!

Maybe that's what happened here. That would be highly dismaying.

You have put yourself in a situation where you need to make false statements in order to comply with the law. If you create a deathtrap where you control a deadmans switch that prevents it from killing me, that doesn't absolve you of murder simply because the cause of my death is inaction rather than action.

Good thing he isn't murdering anyone then.

I think everyone agrees that not murdering people is a good thing, yes.

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