The Canary Chirps
2nd February 2021
For those of you who don’t know, law enforcement can issue various secret warrants that have some kind of gag order attached. You cannot tell anyone for any reason. You cannot even acknowledge that it exists. The workaround is to set up a warrant canary. This is some kind of flag that says “I have not received” a National Security Letter or something with a gag order. Since they cannot force you to lie, you can always remove the canary when you have received one of these legal notices. The absence of the canary informs people that something changed.
If you find this disturbing, welcome to the club.