You read where companies cannot divulge that fact that they have received a NSL? What if they all started reporting that they did NOT receive a NSL? Then when the reporting stopped, you could draw your own conclusions. Wouldn't work for large companies that might get them frequently, but would be an option for the smaller ones like Lavabit.
It's not clear whether the secret courts that enforce NSLs could consider this a legitimate loophole or too cute to get away with, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Never seen one, but I imagine the NLS reads along the lines of "not giving any indication" -- so if you stopped telling the world, you'd be going against it.
The people who do this for a living aren't stupid, and most of them probably don't even think they're being evil.
By stopping reporting that, they have divulged that they received a letter. So once you receive one, in order to avoid prosecution, you need to keep your notification up as a continuous lie.
No way. You can be compelled by the courts to actively perpetuate a lie? I don't think so.
The deal with the warrant canary is the guy signs a new message every (day?), actively affirming that he hasn't been served with any such secret warrants.
What if he gets tired of it? Same with running the business? You can't be compelled to work forever, neither for free or otherwise.
> You can be compelled by the courts to actively perpetuate a lie?
tl;dr Yes, these NSL have compelled people to directly lie.
And I don't see why the courts couldn't do that, as lying isn't even a crime. Maintaining the posting isn't even actively telling a lie, you're just not changing anything from the way it was before. So I could definitely see the same court that authorized these sweeping movements also supporting prosecution if you tip your hand on these matters; it's national security on the line, after all!
And even if the courts wouldn't force you to lie, the FBI could still attempt to prosecute you for not lying, and for taking action that directly reveals your receipt of the letter. Even if the court is opposed to it, it will be a lengthy process, and because of "national security!" you may not even get that far. From the government's perspective, you're enabling terrorists through secret and underhanded messaging, so you're already behind the ball both in the judicial court and in the court of public opinion.
Take, for example, the necessarily anonymous writings from 2007 from an NSL recipient:
> Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.
>No way. You can be compelled by the courts to actively perpetuate a lie? I don't think so.
Sure you can. For one, what about people pleading guilty, when they are not, just because their case looks bad and they want to avoid a trial that can put then in jail for decades and get a plea bargain?
What if you set up a Dead Man's Switch of sorts, that you were unable to disable, that would go off and notify a trusted journalist/blogger/etc if you ever tripped it? Tripping it would happen as a result of whatever rules you put in place that make it overwhelmingly likely you're snooping around in your user's data.
The logistics behind this might be hard to pull off. I really don't know enough to know whether something like this is feasible, but if the concept was feasible to implement, it seems like you can just publicly announce ahead of time that the system is in place, and it's out of your hands.
