Which project were you repairing?
-sc From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of William Robbins Sent: Monday, June 2, 2014 12:00 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Hmmm.... TrueCrypt Agreed. I should probably have been more verbose than my "Maybe?" but I was in the midst of a home repair project. ;) - WJR 🙈🙉🙊 On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 9:48 PM, Ben Scott <[email protected]> wrote: On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 5:46 PM, William Robbins <[email protected]> wrote: > Maybe? > http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/06/01/1922248/the-sudden-policy-change-in-truecrypt-explained Slashdot is linking to a blog that's quoting Twitter posts that appear to be incoherent speculation. (I think. It's hard to tell with Twitter.) Anyway, as I read it, the speculation is that this is a warrant canary. Except... it can't be. The issue arises because the gov't can serve you with a warrant or other legal instrument that includes a gag order preventing you from even talking about it. A "warrant canary" is some thing you preemptively maintain as a countermeasure to such. You announce you're maintaining this canary. Then, if you get served, you stop maintaining the canary. The classic example is a daily announcement "We haven't received a warrant". The day you don't post that, everyone knows you just got served.[1] Suddenly yanking the project, without explanation or previously established meaning, is not a warrant canary. It might be what happens when you don't *have* a warrant canary, but that's the exact opposite meaning of the term. So... <shrug> -- Ben [1] The theory is, the gov't can prevent you from saying "I've been served with a warrant", but can't force you to speak untruth. Whether that actually works in reality, I have no idea.
