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Site Launches To Track Warrant Canaries
Trailrunner7 writes: In the years since Edward Snowden began putting much of the NSA's business in the street, including its reliance on the secret FISA court and National security Letters, warrant canaries have emerged as a key method for ISPs, telecoms, and other technology providers to let the public know whether they have received any secret orders. But keeping track of the various canaries scattered around the Web is difficult, so a group of legal and civil liberties organizations have come together to launch a new site to monitor the known warrant canaries.
The Canary Watch site is the work of the EFF, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and NYU's Technology Law and Policy Center and it works on a simple concept. The site maintains a list of all of the known warrant canaries and periodically checks each organization's site to see whether the canary is still there and then lists any changes to the status. Right now, Canary Watch lists 11 organizations, including Lookout, Pinterest, Reddit, and Tumblr.
"Canarywatch lists the warrant canaries we know about, tracks changes or disappearances of those canaries, and allows users to submit canaries not listed on the site. For people with interest in a particular canary, the site will show any changes we know about," Nadia Kayyali of the EFF said in a blog post.
The Canary Watch site is the work of the EFF, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and NYU's Technology Law and Policy Center and it works on a simple concept. The site maintains a list of all of the known warrant canaries and periodically checks each organization's site to see whether the canary is still there and then lists any changes to the status. Right now, Canary Watch lists 11 organizations, including Lookout, Pinterest, Reddit, and Tumblr.
"Canarywatch lists the warrant canaries we know about, tracks changes or disappearances of those canaries, and allows users to submit canaries not listed on the site. For people with interest in a particular canary, the site will show any changes we know about," Nadia Kayyali of the EFF said in a blog post.
What do people do when these canaries die? Are people expected to stop using these services when the canary dies? Is it an early warning to people who may have been the subject of a secret warrant? Is this supposed to get the masses angry/raise awareness to hopefully bring change?
I'm not trying to make an argument here, I'm legitimately confused as to the practical use of this tool outside an academic/theoretical scenario. What is the goal here?
Posting it just confirms that you received it.
Tear it up and shred it, it is just a letter that has no power.
"no approval from a judge is required for the FBI to issue an NSL."
That means it is worthless, when a court decides to issue an order for something, then I'll care.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
I'm well aware that most large companies just comply, they don't care... I do, I consider NSLs to be unconstitutional, get a judge to issue a warrant and I'll be willing to comply.
Yes they do, and if they came in guns drawn, I of course would offer no resistance.
I would then call my lawyer. They would have to charge me with something in front of a judge, at which point they are going to have a hard time explaining why I'm there since I didn't actually do anything.
Now if the judge wants to issue a warrant for the information the FBI is asking for, then of course I would comply. The judge can also order me to not reveal anything about the case for security reasons, and I can respect that too. The key part is the judge is doing the ordering, not the FBI.
My issue is with the FBI just deciding they can ask for anything they want without a warrant.
While I don't care to get into details for obvious reasons, I can tell you that they can be compelled to get a warrant. All I'll say is that I've been served before, I've had the FBI standing in my office and I complied because there was a warrant issued by a judge.
And that is how it is supposed to happen.
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Side note, while it is true the FBI can charge you with a crime for ignoring a NSL, that charge isn't secret... let me just say that when told politely that you'll comply with a warrant, they can get one pretty quickly (less than 24 hours in the above case) so it really isn't asking that much of them.