this is what "warrant canaries" are for. dont use anyone who doesnt have one
'If it's illegal to advertise that you've received a court order of some kind, it's illegal to intentionally and knowingly take any action that has the effect of advertising the receipt of that order. A judge can't force you to do anything, but every lawyer I've spoken to has indicated that having a "canary" you remove or choose not to update would likely have the same legal consequences as simply posting something that explicitly says you've received something. If any lawyers have a different legal interpretation, I'd love to hear it.' --Moxie Marlinspike
The parent comment implies that in such a case “no comment” is not compliant with the law, as it informs the inquirer.
Hence the only way to comply is to answer “no”, which is a lie.
The difference between a canary and a "no comment" is that "no comment" is an extremely common thing to say whether an allegation is true or not so it's not very suspicious, while stopping a canary is very suspicious.
So it's like the scenario you outlined earlier, but more effective.
If you think "no comment" means either yes or no, you're pretending to know something you don't, and you should absolutely stop and go "wait, why am I lying to myself? And why am I believing my own lie?"
You're the one that said no comment was suspicious! I said something weaker than that, that it's not very suspicious.
I'm not the one that said a canary failing is a yes. I said it was significantly more suspicious than a no comment.
If it's about what powersnail is saying, I think they're just wording things imprecisely. The canary doesn't actually affect the meaning of "no comment". The canary means that if it disappears, things are very suspicious, and if ask directly about the canary and get a "no comment" then you not only stay very suspicious, you also know they didn't forget. The no comment itself is not a "yes", but from a security point of view you should treat this active lack of canary as if it is a "yes".
Which they referred to as a "practical/tentative yes". Which I think is a reasonable way to describe the situation. It's not "flat out wrong" or "counter-productive".
> so even if it's going to lose you some customers, no comment
You're going too far here.
If you used to comment on something, and you could easily comment on it, and it loses you customers not to comment... you should comment. If you don't, it is suspicious.
I've always felt that the warrant canary is a nerd's gotcha designed to get out of a sketchy legal process (NSLs) and that judges would be very unsympathetic. But IANAL.
When a company, who already has a canary in place, receives this kind of warrants, what _can_ the company practically do to comply with non-disclosure? It seems that lying is now the only option left, if the company must explicitly post a "no, we didn't receive such a warrant".
What if they have one like this quarterly canary at privacy-forward "write.as" last updated 9 months ago?
It should be noted with significance if this message
fails to be updated on a quarterly basis.
2023-01-05 21:06:06 UTC
No warrants have ever been served to Write.as, or
Write.as principals or employees.