canaries

Furthermore, Google makes efforts to fight back against NSL's, and even have canaries implemented.

The legal theory behind warrant canaries is based on the concept of compelled speech.

The page includes a note about warrant canaries never having been tested in a court of law, but you shouldn't be hopeful.

The Canaries are not even close to Barcelona, they're off the coast of Africa.

Actual canaries aren't native to the US, unless it was a pet someone released.

More specifically, stack canaries work by modifying every function's prologue and epilogue regions to place and check a value on the stack respectively.

Former teachers who homeschool their kids are like canaries in the coal mine.

I think the ones that drop off might be the proverbial canaries in the coal mine.

Wouldn't we need to know more about the constitutional law of Germany to meaningfully make decisions based on warrant canaries from German companies?

If the answer is zero, which is more plausible: 1) that no such warrants have ever been issued, or 2) that they have, and warrant canaries have already failed the test in secret?

I'd also expect NSLs at this point to include language on warrant canaries.

Is this something added specifically to prevent warrant canaries?

I do have to admit my idea reminds me of warrant canaries, a "clever hack" around the law that I ultimately believe can't really be lawful.

That's like arguing that as long as "canaries" like Facebook don't see any reason to move to Ruby or Python for web dev, the rest of us might as well stay on PHP too.

The latter outcome (that all canaries are banned) seems totally implausible from a first amendment point of view: it would prohibit anyone from ever saying "I've never received an NSL," period.

I suspect that the judicial system will not rule favorably on such a clear attempt to get around the gag order, and the end result may very well be a limitation on warrant "canaries" being published in the first place.

Canaries and other techniques that leverage volatiles do not prevent an overflow; they just try to cope with the consequences of an overflow which has happened.