Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/06/spideroak-warrant-canary-to-be.html
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So, what exactly does this mean?
They did get served a warrant?
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It could be that their system was compromised by law enforcement. As stated, the canary worked.
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The transparency report and the canary are not mutually exclusive, so I read this to mean they were served a warrant, removed the canary, and then were forced to put the canary back up.
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Can the government compel you to break the law? (Presumably posting an false canary would be fraud.)
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Only if a government believes in false canaries. It’s not like they are a religion or anything.
SpiderOak relies on client-side encryption, so I’m still feeling pretty secure about my use of them.
I’m genuinely curious about one thing: what is a company with a warrant canary supposed to do once the canary “dies”? You can really only use it once.
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Start again with another, different type of bird. There’s enough to be going on with.
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“biannual report acknowledges official government requests”
meaning it does NOT acknowledge “unofficial” or “secret” government requests.
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I work at SpiderOak and am happy to provide clarification for anyone interested. We just published a response on our blog - https://spideroak.com/articles/a-transparency-report-is-a-canary/. The TL;DR is that the canary is in place and was never taken down. Happy to discuss further if you have questions.
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This generally means that they’re received a national security letter. NSLs don’t require judicial oversight and come with a gag order, hence the use of the warrant canary as a loophole as a way for a company to indicate that they’re been served. Lavabit famously shut down in order to avoid compliance.
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Thank you for the link.
Blink twice if you are under duress 
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