Sites like Twitter, Yahoo, Google and Facebook are required to turn over user data to government agencies. In many cases, they are gagged by National Security Letter from disclosing that a request has been made. The way the law is written DOESN’T require that they inform users when no request has been made. A new site, Canary Watch, will track various sites that are affirming that no request is pending and will flag when the site goes mum, signifying that a data request has been made. While there are many challenges with this approach, such as distinguishing between blanket data dumps on all users that would trigger a Canary and individual account data that might not, it is a step in the right direction and wonderful loophole.
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9:47 am on February 4, 2015
