I'll admit I don't know anything about the situation, but the phrase "violent genocide of muslims by buddhists" was NOT something I was expecting to hear anywhere.
I assume the copper wire was designed as a simple resistive switch? That will cause electrolysis and corrosion. There's an improved design that involves measuring capacitance, which also uses less power. I have a commercial sump pump monitor that works this way.
Yep, but in the end I was able to switch by monitoring the voltage generated by the water on the stainless rods, using a microcontroller. Worked great for a few years until I moved out. Haven't had a sump pump since. (good riddance)
I mean, yeah - They're pretty enthusiastically telling us that's what they want to do. It's not a conspiracy theory if they're actually advertising it...
There should probably be case law before anyone actually believes in warrant canaries.
'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
Why would someone have to lie? They can just say "We can't comment on that" without providing an answer. And then customers can go "sounds pretty suspicious, time to switch VPN services".
The point of the canary, is to turn any non-answer into a practical, or at least a tentative, "yes". If you no longer see an explicit "no", it means "yes".
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.
No, it isn't. It's pretending that "no comment" means something it doesn't. Just because you want it to mean "yes" doesn't mean it means that. It means "we are not going to comment on this, because we have a sane legal department and we're not going to give you any information one way or another".
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?"
Yes, I was the one saying that _people_ consider it suspicious, but I'm also the one saying that as a company your only course of action is to not comment on legal matters unless legally compelled to. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. People (in aggregate) don't act rationally, so even if it's going to lose you some customers, no comment.
That doesn't explain your previous comment. Was the accusation about [[pretending that "no comment" means something it doesn't]] a misunderstanding of what I was saying? Or a confusion between me and powersnail? Or something else entirely?
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'd hire a lawyer that knows how to deal with them and knows how to say no comment.
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.
At least from my perspective, it is not just a "gotcha" problem or whatever feelings it conjures up in a judge's mind.
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".
> This is what "warrant canaries" are for. dont use anyone who doesnt have one
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.
Especially when dishonestly applied to so many people who had all their other shots and maybe some extras, but just weren't on board with this one brand new one.
