The Canary Chirps

IMO, the author should seek redress to the fullest extent of the law. Government overreach, especially in judicial matters, should not be tolerated and allowing them to occur, even if the consequence of that is "a paedophile going free" (a result I find unlikely; if the authorities involved are willing to break one set of laws to gather evidence they don't really need, there's no reason to believe that they will not continue to pursue the guy after this evidence is rendered invalid)is an example of the slow erosion of civil liberties by acquiescence to the subtle extension of law enforcement powers. This is, again in my opinion, a more critical and chronic problem than the, admittedly individually more terrible but certainly more isolated, actual crime referenced here.

I'm interested in the idea of the warrant canary, however. My own research into it has led me to believe that while they are supported by organizations like the EFF, that support may be more ideologically based than legally sound, and should the government take issue with their use, the author could have found himself in serious trouble for violating FISA (a case of breaking the intent of the law, not the letter; while there is a great deal of faith in the legal system to abnegate the former in favor of the latter, I would still be hesitant to tweak it's nose in such a manner). Are there any legal experts here that could weigh in?

One other solution is to share blog/software/data with someone outside the jurisdiction.

The US can force someone to add a backdoor to their software and forbid to say anything. If the code is co-maintained by someone in the Netherlands, that person will put a big warning on the site stating that the content was changed.

This is just an example, other pair of countries works.

There are countries that can enforce extraterritorial jurisdiction (notably the US) but this applies to whole countries, not small companies. They forced us (France) to abandon business with Iran, good luck for them to force a small company without footprint in the US to do so.

It’s crazy that a poorly scanned PDF attachment to an email holds any legal power.

I’d trash it and wait for them to send (or serve) it properly. e.g. through registered mail to my postal address, or in person.

> (For clarity: this is an example. As of today, I have not received any FISA warrants.)

Cunning. Love it.

> You should consult your own attorney for your own situation.

I love these disclaimers which assume that the attorney I can procure with my own budgetary / social network constraints would *clearly* be better than what I am reading on a blog post. In short, YMMV.

Since it didn't appear to be legit, couldn't he have ignored it? It wasn't from the feds and presumably he wasn't in KY.

all kinds of "secrets laws" and secret government stuff is the opposite of democracy. any country that does this cannot say it's a free democracy without lying. (it seems there exist no free countries).

if the law is this corrupt, breaking it is justice. however you might have an unfortunate accident or be found to be a closet pedophile (or rapist, or other forms of reputation destruction) if you go against these kinds of secretive entities.