[rtpg]

RE the warrant canary: all legal analysis I've seen points to the canary being functionally useless. A court would throw out the defense immediately, removing a canary pointing out that a warrant has been served is the same as tweeting that you got a warrant.

It's the minimal legal hack: completely useless in a court but massive generator of internet comments

Though it generating discussion around the warrants themselves is a good feature

[Dylan16807]

It's still useful as a rhetorical tool against enforcement. If someone gets imprisoned for saying "no comment" and refusing to actively lie, that would hopefully cause an enormous outrage.

[stavros]

You don't "remove" a canary, you just stop updating it. The intent being that they can't force you to keep updating it.

[rtpg]

They can't force you. Just like they can't force you to not tweet.

They can sure sue the hell out of you after you stop updating though.

[SahAssar]

The idea is that forced speech is different than free speech. That means that someone can force you to not say something, but not force you to say something.

[rtpg]

so there are two things:

- The government cannot force you to update the canary. A court cannot get you to update it, because it's forced speech to demand an update.

- You created the canary of your own accord, and are responsible for its effects. Not updating the canary is, effectively, speech.

Though, from [0]:

"Realistically, though, courts compel speech all the time. Court-ordered apologies, disclosures, and notices are not unusual. And if ever a court would be inclined to compel speech, it would be in a situation like this one, where a company intentionally set out to get around a gag order with this kind of convoluted sea-lawyering."

[0]:http://law.stackexchange.com/questions/268/is-there-any-lega...

[type0]

What if they could do it instead of you, even if you use distributed signing how difficult would it be?