> This must be some "technically correct" weasel words bullcrap
Is that even necessary? A gag order means they can't reveal backdoors, and their entire stack is so locked down that discovering them is hard and unlikely.
Gag order cannot force them to lie. A lie like that can be illegal even.
If there's a gag order, then companies say "we have a gag order". Like Google and Twitter did back in the day when asked. And then immediately started releasing Transparency Report to show how many of the gag orders they receive, so gov't couldn't say "we don't request anything".
I don't think this is true. There was the whole fiasco around the EULA canary that a company had that, if it was removed, was supposed to indicate that the company had received a gag order. I don't believe it had been actually tested in court. I believe it had to do with the FISA court system. I can't find a link but there are definitely cases of gray area where courts have required entities to lie.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
This is absolutely a thing. For comparison, banking regulation basically makes banks extensions of the intelligence services and forces them to tell off law enforcement in case "suspicious" account activities are detected. Usually banks will also close the account, but the regulations ensure the customer will never find out why because the bank will stonewall them to ensure they don't accidentally tattle.
Even if no formal regulation to that effect exists for social media companies, intelligence agencies presumably have sufficient leverage to ensure similar access.
They can "No comments" all the way, but there's no way to legally forcing a commercial company to lie. The company can lie, of course, but it's their choice, not an order.
Is that even necessary? A gag order means they can't reveal backdoors, and their entire stack is so locked down that discovering them is hard and unlikely.