Hacker News Reader

Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I'd call three subpoenas "a string of subpoenas" even if it's technically correct. But I'm more talking about specifically mentioning that the subpoenas from March and April 2023 don't have a gag order. Why mention those months specifically if in the other months they didn't receive any? The natural thing would have been to end the sentence six words earlier.

View on HN

It sounds more like they're addressing the inevitable "why didn't you post as soon as it happened" party.

It is perfectly clear that you are correct because trying to tell anyone about confidential subpoenas could be illegal.

When it requires so much "reading between the lines" that even this community doesn't have a strong consensus on whether this is being (illegally) communicated or not, I think it's plausibly deniable, but IANAL. Contrast with well-known canaries.

Canaries that are well known would just become normal communication and thus illegal under a non-disclosure. It's just going to get worse lol.

> I'm not sure I'd call three subpoenas "a string of subpoenas" even if it's technically correct

I would if the sequence was such that the receipt of eachbof thr subsequebt ones delayed writeup of the overall incident in the interest of completeness or because there was some relationship between them

> the subpoenas from March and April 2023 don't have a gag order. Why mention those months specifically if in the other months they didn't receive any?

Because you are doing an aggregate writeup of a series of events and you want to convey when they occurred and why you are able to do a detailed writeup.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com