Except this is an affirmative action. Warrant canaries are simply removing from the TOS that the company has not/will not interact with law enforcement.

This is directly violating gag orders. Passing a message, even if it's encrypted or obfuscated is absolutely illegal. The article is a little BS as this sort of thing has been tested in court.

The only reason warrant canaries are in the gray zone is because they are specifically crafted that the business has to remove their cooperation clause to keep the ToS contract valid.

There's nothing like that at play here. It's literally "Just break the gag order, here's our secret handshake".