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But then as the parent poster mentioned, what's the point of the whole canary concept

They might have anticipated receiving a more restrictive gag order when they originally put the canary in place.

I wonder if the NSA should have a team that just goes around organisations that have warrant canaries and sends them baseless confidential messages, just enough to trigger the canary. The fact that they don't do this suggests they don't think canaries are much use.

Most organizations which post warrant canaries use phrasing that would be less vulnerable to this "attack", such as making the canary conditional on the compelled disclosure of information.

My cynical side wonders if they were just looking for an excuse to get rid of it so they can continue their process of sheding off the final remaining shreds of the original cypherpunk culture of crypto.

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