Kinda depends on judicial interpretations of free speech, but that's how warrant canaries work. Are warrant canaries legal in the UK? They seem to be in the US but idk how well established that is.
Bruce Schneier wrote in a blog post that "[p]ersonally, I have never believed [warrant canaries] would work. It relies on the fact that a prohibition against speaking doesn't prevent someone from not speaking. But courts generally aren't impressed by this sort of thing, and I can easily imagine a secret warrant that includes a prohibition against triggering the warrant canary.
Lots of similar discussion on HN already, e.g. in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5871541.
So I think a journalist asking an organization like Google if they've been asked isn't really informative, because they almost certainly have been.
I'm not sure how it's relevant other than to say an answer from Google's response might seem oblique, but they're also being asked obliquely and that colors how you might interpret their response.
It’s like if you conspired with your brother to steal from the cookie jar. He stole the cookies while you distracted your parents. Later on your mother reports to your father:
> When asked whether they stole from the cookie jar, derbOac did not provide a direct answer but suggested they didn’t didn’t know who did it: "I did not see anyone removing cookies from the jar," they stated.
Your statement is factually correct, but it doesn’t say what your mother concluded.