As in, a judge would briefly think 'nice try' and send you to federal prison. Is this a concern for rsync.net? I assume they would have legal advice that supports your position, and know far more me.
"As in, a judge would briefly think 'nice try' and send you to federal prison. Is this a concern for rsync.net?"
I'm not sure I parse your sentence correctly, but the only actor here is the US corporation named rsync.net. It is the entity that takes these actions (or lack thereof) and it would be the object of follow-up actions/proceedings/decisions - whatever they might be.
The type of data stored with them requires notification of the data subjects if there is a breach (even if that breach is due to legal process), I've found the warrant canary to be quite reassuring and understandable to the non-technical people whose business is at risk in the event of data loss. We don't get that same level of assurance with some of the other places we might store our backup.
It's hard to think of a "cloud" provider as providing personalized service, but rsync.net pulls it off. They've helped take the fear out of storing critical data on "other people's computers" by proving themselves reliable, trustworthy, and helpful.
That's really interesting ... you're the first customer I have ever heard make the connection between the breach notification provisions of (for instance) a BAA and the Warrant Canary.
I have very briefly considered that link myself but never gave it much serious thought. To be honest, we worry a bit if the kind of customer that is giving careful thought to custody and disclosure and notifications would be spooked by the Warrant Canary and just think it was weird ...
So I'm glad to hear that and I think that perhaps we should reconsider making that explicit link ...
We will, in fact, comply with any form of proper legal service. We do not want customers using our service to commit criminal acts.
So if a "normal" warrant is issued, we will simply add that to the canary that is published every Monday. If it does not hinder the legal proceedings we may even identify what the warrant was about or even publish it. On the other hand, if that would be harmful we will simply note that we received one.
On the other hand, if we are prohibited from even mentioning that we have received some form of legal service at one of our locations, we will follow that prohibition. We will also stop updating the canary.
... and that is where your question comes in ...
rsync.net is by no means a household name. However, if we stopped publishing our warrant canary, people would notice. It would be a news event in some circles and would continue to be noteworthy as it continued to not be updated.
I think that if this occurred we would only restart our updates of the warrant canary on the other side of a long legal process. At that time, the new warrant canary would make reference to the (now finalized) legal proceedings.
Another really happy customer.
I've heard and read lots of stories of people losing all of their data in some accident or theft, and that's just something I don't have to worry about.
Can't think of any other service as reliable over such a long period of time, with the possible exception of running water.
