“Under the Patriot Act, the US government can demand information from companies and ask them to keep the order secret, but there’s a clever legal feint that can sidestep this: a so-called ‘warrant canary,'” Colin Lecher reports for The Verge. “Now it appears Apple may have sent up the signal.”
“In its first transparency report, where it documents legal requests, Apple included this footnote: ‘Apple has never received an order under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. We would expect to challenge such an order if served on us,'” Lecher reports. “Many believed this to be a canary — a line that would disappear if and when Apple received a Patriot Act order, silently (and, although it hasn’t been tested in court, perhaps legally) informing close readers.”
Lecher reports, “Apple’s last two transparency reports, which include the last half of 2013 and first half of 2014, dropped the canary — or at least changed the language in it — suggesting the company may have been ordered to hand over records under the Patriot Act. Now the report only reads this: ‘To date, Apple has not received any orders for bulk data.'”
Read more in the full article here.
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