Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

This reads like something a non-lawyer who watched too many bad detective movies would dream up. Theres absolutely no way this would pass legal muster —- even warrant canaries are mostly untested, but this is clearly like 5x ‘worse’ for the reasons you point out.

View on HN

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.

>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.

Right - the whole premise is that the government cannot compel speech (in the US). So if you publish something every week that says, “we’ve never been subpoenaed as of this week” and then receive a subpoena, the government can’t force you to lie and publish the same note afterwards. The lack of it being published is the canary here.

Whether you can be compelled to lie under these circumstances or not is not a resolved question of law. Although it seems fairly likely that compelling speech in this way is unconstitutional, if it has been tested in court, the proceedings are not public.

Good thing no one is doing anything unconstitutional right now?

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"

I would think to stopping doing something is equally an action as to do something, in regards to warrant canaries and gag orders. You had to take make some change to your process, or if automated take an actual action to disable. In either case, there was a cognizant choice that was made

Yes but the theory, at least in the US, is that the government cannot compel you to say something. That is, they can't make you put up a notice.

More specifically, the theory is that cannot compel you to lie, there are all kinds of cases where businesses are compelled to share specific messages.

Ah, that was confusing to me. Thank you.

As far as I've seen, the examples of that have always been things like health warnings and ingredients lists, where showing that message is a condition of being in that (licensed) business, and applies equally to any company.

Do you have a more custom example in mind?

All sorts of consent decrees, a huge amount of union and workplace law requires things to be posted for employees.

For employee things, I can understand being required to notify parties in agreements the company has entered into. As far as I understand, consent degrees are settlements and as such a mutually-agreed mechanism for ending a lawsuit early; their terms are whatever the parties negotiate and do not come from the government.

To be more precise, the law requires employees to publish the nlrb notice in well trafficked or otherwise conspicuous locations.

I think there are other places where "government mandated corporation inform people of their rights" is a thing, especially with things like data use and sharing.

In terms of consent decrees, that was the wrong example. But lots of judgements do involve various notification requirements.

Car manufacturer warranty recall letters are probably a good example. I get them even though I've never done business with the car manufacturer -- I bought the vehicle from a private party.

But that still sort of connects (at least in my mind) to health warnings etc.

What do you think of this angle: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45892680

yea, I get that, but my gut tells me this doesn't pass the sniff test

It's a choice you make and action you take either way, be it not updating a canary or sending a covert financial transaction

That it has not been tested in court is why it's still a "theory" (hypothesis?)

My hope is that a jury of our peers would stay closer to the spirit than the letter of the law

Inaction is not action.

The choice to cease perform an act, when you have been consistently doing it, is itself an action

No, making a choice to do nothing is not considered action by any legal definition.

The legal theory is that in the US the first amendment prevents the government from forcing you to make a false update. I don’t know if it’s ever been tested.

As I understand, this theory wouldn’t even hold up in other countries where you could be compelled to make such a false update.

What if I, sometimes, annually paint a canvas with an artistic interpretation of a canary bird? Can a government compel me to make an artistic expression with specific content, at my own expense? What if I'm just not in the right kind of creative mood to make it a good painting?

Or maybe I can bill the government for the compelled artwork -- I'm afraid I'm tremendously expensive as an artist.

And this would be why warrant canaries aren't seen as a proven legal shield yet.

Yes, the equivalent of a warning canary would be that Google pays the Israeli government a set of payment every month such as 3100 shekels (for +31, NL) and then suddenly November 2025 they stop issuing it. That would mean there's a legal investigation targeting Google by the Dutch prosecutor (OM) involving Israeli data.

I suspect they didn't go for this route as it is too slow.

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.

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.

This only works for Israel because members of the Israeli government expect to be above the law. They need to offer only the flimsiest pretext to get away with anything. Look what happened with Tom Alexandrovich.

From reading the Wiki, it seems like the state cops (who were somehow in charge of the case) forgot to take his passport when they arrested him, and then he just fled after he paid bail?

Is there any evidence he was helped in his escape by anyone? Genuinely asking (and genuinely seeking hard facts and data).

He was interviewed by the feds after his arrest and mentioned his upcoming flight in the interview transcript but still was allowed to leave the country.

Right, because his passport wasn't confiscated. I still err on this being stupidity by the Clark County cops in the lack of further information.

Just jumping in to point out that thus had 6 points before the hasbada bots swooped in and now it's at 1.

Agree that there's something fishy/missing in this story. Never say never, but I find it extremely unlikely that Google/Amazon lawyers, based in the US, would agree to such a blatantly mafia-like scheme.

It's certainly very interesting and difficult to explain...

> a blatantly mafia-like scheme.

Yeap...they would never do it ....

"Tech, crypto, tobacco, other companies fund Trump’s White House ballroom" - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/23/trump-ballroom-dono...

Wouldn't the lawyers be based in Israel - under some Israel-based shell/subsidiary of Google/Amazon, that owns the data centers, and complies with local law?

First day on this planet?

> I find it extremely unlikely that Google/Amazon lawyers, based in the US, would agree to such a blatantly mafia-like scheme.

I trust The Guardian. So I agree It was unlikely. I find it very sad

Very sad

I don't know about Google but Amazon works with lawyers and other roles to routinely operate illegal union-busting strategies. It is blatantly illegal behavior that they use all their might to get away with. I don't know why you would find it so unbelievably surprising that they would do illegal mafia-like things.

There is no way a US company would enter this sort of deal with Israel where they promise to circumvent a gag order. The money isn't worth going to jail for and the execs signing the deal would go to jail and they have little to benefit from. Story has no sources and makes no sense. Either the Guardian is reporting some rumor or they're just making stuff up.

Larry Ellison, biggest private donor to the IDF, enters the chat.

Is it really that difficult to believe it could be accurate? If we take at face value what has been written about other big tech companies (mainly thinking of Facebook) as they grew their relationship in countries such as the People’s Republic of China, we also see they had to sweeten the deal by giving the government more power over how they could use the services.

I do think it’s kind of a different situation though because apparently the employees of Facebook could have gotten into legal trouble in those other countries they were trying to expand into.

Nobody is going to jail for this, and they know it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com