The whole concept of a "warrant canary" is so dishearteningly Kafka-esque. I dunno. I'm starting to feel like the NSA is the "record industry" of the federal government - their business model is obsolete but we haven't replaced it with anything yet.
Does this also mean a flotilla of lawyers in Apple's employ have descended on Washington to defend the Cupertino way of life? -annoyed that I have yet to find a large-drive replacement MP3 player, so I may have to buy another iPod Classic before they're gone just in case my aging one quits
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'K. So: one of the provisions of Fight Club is you're not allowed to talk about Fight club. Oops, I mean one of the provisions of the Patriot Act is if the NSA asks to see your data you must: 1) comply or face contempt of court 2) not inform anyone it happened or face contempt of court. There's a loophole around it, though, called a "Warrant Canary." Look at it this way: Under the provisions of the patriot act, it's illegal to post a sign that says "the NSA has broken into our data." However, it is not illegal to post a sign that says "the NSA has NOT broken into our data" and then take that sign down when the NSA has broken into your data. It's the equivalent of saying "if you are reading this sign there is NOT a burglar in this house. Watch for this sign to disappear."
A Vermont librarian, Jessamyn West, created a bit of a stir by distributing signs to Vermont libraries like the following : "The FBI has not been here. (Watch closely for the removal of this sign)".
The NSA will stop this shit as soon as they're defunded. Unfortunately, their funding is discretionary and part of the "black budget" which means congress has to pass an act to even talk about it. Combine that with the fact that an overwhelming amount of surveillance conducted by the "black" programs is actually industrial espionage and completely not defense or strategy-related - AT&T will happily let the NSA spy on foreign calls using AT&T lines because the NSA will happily drop hints about what Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) is up to, for example. So. Defunding the NSA, even a little tiny bit, is tricky as fuck. 'member back when the CIA failed to stop September 11? And we rolled them into Homeland Security and clipped their wings? And turned them into a public-facing organization with almost no charter for foreign surveillance? Their budget was 4.8 billion back then. It's 15 billion now. They bought a fucking air force in the interim. TL;DR no
You aren't allowed to say you've gotten a patriot act request, but you can say you haven't. Some companies periodically say they haven't, with the intent of stopping saying they haven't when they have, indirectly telling everyone that they have. Apple has stopped, implying that they have.