Six Lines

Two Clever Approaches to Revealing Government Secrets

Posted by Aaron Massey on 13 Jun 2013.

I’ve seen a couple of rather clever PRISM / Verizon related approaches to revealing government secrets. First, there’s a criminal defendant seeking to use the records reportedly kept by the NSA as a part of his defense. The government was claiming that they didn’t have these records, but perhaps they can’t have it both ways. (via @csoghoian)

Second, many of the companies alleged to have been involved are under orders not to talk about their levels of involvement. There may be a partial way around this if they were to use something called a warrant canary, which is a pretty simple idea. Basically, you regularly post notices saying that you haven’t been served with a secret subpoena when that’s the case. Then, if you are served with a secret subpoena, you simply stop posting those notices. Obviously, this would require a bit of foresight and dedication, but it is at least clever.