A warrant canary is a method by which a communications service provider aims to implicitly inform its users that the provider has been served with a government subpoena despite legal prohibitions on revealing the existence of the subpoena
A warrant canary is a method by which a communications service provider aims to implicitly inform its users that the provider has been served with a government subpoena despite legal prohibitions on revealing the existence of the subpoena
Also in the wiki (only relevant for the US, but that’s where Marlinspike is from and likely talking about):
It’s not illegal (yet), so as long as you’re willing to fight an order to leave it up, you can ensure that your warrant canary is still effective. Either you take it down with no consequences, or you take it down, get arrested, and create case law.
Now, I wouldn’t trust most people or companies with a warrant canary to be willing to do that, but I’d probably trust a wc from Cory Doctorow, for example.