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warrant canary

what a canary is, why it matters in this niche, and plainly: what this project would and would not do under legal pressure.

what a warrant canary is

a warrant canary is a regularly repeated public statement that its publisher has not received certain kinds of secret legal process - national security letters, gagged subpoenas and the like. the mechanism leans on compelled-speech doctrine: a court can order someone to stop talking, but ordering them to keep affirmatively lying is legally shakier ground. when such an order arrives, the publisher simply stops repeating the statement, and readers infer receipt from the silence. the canary works by its absence, not its words.

the genre's history is instructive and messy - apple's uncanaried line vanishing into a false alarm, lavabit shutting down rather than explain, zombie canaries compelled to keep publishing. we cover all of it, including why an unsigned canary is theatre, in warrant canaries in practice: why the signature matters more than the words. read that post before trusting anyone's canary, including ours.

this project's position, plainly

this site publishes a status list, free tools and editorial content about the tor ecosystem. it does not host user data, communications, or accounts.
would: comply with valid legal process actually served on this project, within its lawful scope.
would not: proactively hand over anything beyond that scope, or quietly alter historical records such as check logs and published posts.
will: update this page whenever the statement below changes, and say so explicitly if this template ever stops being maintained.

the statement

as of October 9, 2026, this project has not received any national security letter, gagged subpoena, or other secret legal process, and has not been subject to any secret court order concerning the operation of this site.

important caveats - read before relying on this

this page is a template maintained by the operator. the date above is generated at page render; it reflects when the operator last reviewed and renewed the statement, not an automated cryptographic attestation.
this statement is currently not pgp-signed. until it is signed with a long-lived key whose fingerprint is archived elsewhere, treat it as good faith, not proof - per our own reporting, an unsigned canary is theatre.
silence here could mean many things besides a gag order: an abandoned project, a lapsed renewal. absence of updates is ambiguous by nature.