The main problem with canaries is that it's dead easy for a government to remove them from existence, simply issue subpoenas to every website that has one.
The users could then decide to jump ship but realistically they won't.
I don’t disagree, but I’ll observe that governments used to be much less friendly with tech incumbents, at least in public.
Ten years ago it was a scandal that big tech interacted with the surveillance state at all: Zuckerberg drove an initiative around cross-DC encryption at ruinous expense because of the mere accusation that the NSA might have a tap.
Today they’re giving us the finger with NSA board members. It’s flagrant, arrogant, and anti-hacker anything: you will do nothing, because you can do nothing.
Politicians have been largely able to convince that it's tech that it's evil, with their actions always being colored through a political lens, whether it's "helping pedophiles" or "spreading misinformation" or what have you.
The vassalization of these companies was imminent, and now, it is complete.
I don’t expect much from politicians, in my lifetime the political class has mostly seemed to be pretty nakedly self-serving.
I’m sad because so many of my personal heroes, the hackers I’ve admired, are just on board past any possible argument that it’s in the public welfare.
I learn in the same month that OpenAI is satisfying their voracious appetite for data with an NSA partnership as I do that the old-school FB infra braintrust is taking the money.
I’m embarrassed by all of this. I want to be remembered as part of something else.
The government doesn't even have to remove them from existence. A judge most likely wont care how you leaked information you where told to keep secret and will just throw the book at you wether you used a canary to do so or not.
> The main problem with canaries is that it's dead easy for a government to remove them from existence, simply issue subpoenas to every website that has one.
Why can't social media platforms implement warrant canaries per user profile?
The users could then decide to jump ship but realistically they won't.