> This sounds like warrant canaries
A warrant canary works by removing information, not by transmitting it. You put up a sign like "The FBI has not issued a warrant" and then remove it if they do, even if there is a gag order stating you cannot disclose that they issued you a warrant. This only works because you have not told anyone that a warrant has been issued but they must infer that the missing canary implies such a warrant has been dispatched.
> but in this case it's pretty clear to any judge that such payments constitute disclosure
I think what is funniest is that it could have been much more secret. When I saw the reference in the intro to payments I was thinking "don't tell me they're so dumb they're coding info like Costco". That they'd use the cents to detail access. Like .99 for all clear and .98 for access. But that's not "clever" at all lol
> warrant canary works by removing information, not by transmitting it.
You transmit information by changing the content of the transmission, basically just like any communication works
> This only works
do you know that? Haven't heard of it actually working in any high profile case.
> because you have not told anyone that a warrant has been issued
you have told them explicitly by agreeing to a scheme both parties understand and by enacting the message change under said scheme. You basically just used some encoding to hide the plain message
I think a canary works by having a date it was last updated and expiration date, and you just stop updating it if the condition no longer holds. You don't modify it if the event occurs, because then you are making a barred communication.
First off, you're using the word in the definition. You can't use "transmit" to define "transmit". A transmission is the noun variation of transmit (verb).
Second off, a transmission is *active*
Think about radio. If I am constantly producing a 440kHz signal then I'm transmitting a signal. If I'm not producing the signal, I'm not transmitting.
You are not considered to be transmitting unless you are holding down the button to send the signal.
That's how a canary works. You're constantly transmitting a signal (the canary is constantly singing) and then all of a sudden it goes quiet. You have stopped transmission.
Does this communicate? Yes. But what it communicates is ambiguous. Maybe the canary just went to sleep. Maybe it starved to death instead of getting carbon dioxide poisoning. It does not provide an unambiguous truth.
That reasonable deniability is the reason a canary works. You can claim it was taken down for other reasons, such as an accident. Those reasons have to be believable and justifiable. Mind you, a warrant canary can work like going down in one commit and up in the next, happening over a small period of time. A canary does not need to work by continuous existence or continuous absence.
Canaries also frequently work by having expirations (which is closer to how you're thinking, but still follow the same abstraction discussed above). It has to be manually updated or modified. For example I could add the canary "godelski hasn't been raided by the FBI: signed 31 oct 2025 expires 7 Nov 2025". Were that message to still exist exactly on Nov 7th (and it will because I can't edit comments outside a time window) then you can conclude that my canary expired. You can't conclude I was raided by the FBI. You should be suspicious, but you can't be positive. Maybe I just can't update comments...
This isn't to be conflated with the way we transmit information is through variation, such as high and low in binary. Technically while you're talking you make pauses and "stop talking" several times while saying a single word. But we say you're talking until you stop "transmitting" or complete. If this pause wasn't included then the dead would still speak and your annoying uncle would never shut up
What happens if in the gag order they explicitly forbid the target from removing warrant canaries, and give examples of existing ones?
I’ve always wondered. It seems just as easy for authorities to forbid removing canaries as it is to forbid telling someone something.
EDIT: ah, this is explained downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763032
Yeah there's lots of ways to implement them but expiration is very common.
I guess you can technically be compelled to update your canary. But the main idea is to make it hard to compel the action that results in the canary existing. But don't ask me, like most HN users IANAL