I was struck by the negativity and fatalism of these comments, because in my memory we've discussed warrant canaries, and rsync's in particular, on HN many times over the years.
In my memory the comments used to be more positive about both the effectiveness of canaries and about the sheer cleverness, ingenuity and spirit of fighting back against tyranny.
I wondered what happened to the HN hive mind over the years, has it become more deferential to the authoritarian state, more accepting of the erosion of essential freedoms in exchange for ostensible safety, more dismissive of clever hacks?
Since Snowden we've discovered just how lawless the government is, and what's worse, the spooks also got away scot-free with no consequences whatsoever for wanton violations of the Fourth Amendment.
Saying that you shouldn't rely on legally untested warrant canaries as a sure-fire protection is not the same as agreeing with the executive branch's overreach abetted by a supine & craven Congress and a Judicial branch all too inclined to defer to the executive when spurious security justifications are trotted out.
>I wondered what happened to the HN hive mind over the years, has it become more deferential to the authoritarian state, more accepting of the erosion of essential freedoms in exchange for ostensible safety, more dismissive of clever hacks?
>While there's a noticeable positive sentiment, many of the skeptical comments of today could have been copied verbatim from July, 2009.
The difference is that in 2009 and now a Democrat is in the White House, so those who are convinced that "their side" can't do anything wrong are more willing to accept the authoritarian state.
Look at the Warrant Canary Wikipedia page. Would Jessamyn West—associated so closely with Metafilter, a site that basically self-destructed because its hivemind became so self-reinforcing as to immediately shun anyone at any variance with it in a way that would make a Maoist struggle session conductor proud[1]—have created her sign for libraries if George W. Bush had not been president at the time? I doubt it.
In my memory the comments used to be more positive about both the effectiveness of canaries and about the sheer cleverness, ingenuity and spirit of fighting back against tyranny.
I wondered what happened to the HN hive mind over the years, has it become more deferential to the authoritarian state, more accepting of the erosion of essential freedoms in exchange for ostensible safety, more dismissive of clever hacks?
But then I read a thread from 13 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702247
While there's a noticeable positive sentiment, many of the skeptical comments of today could have been copied verbatim from July, 2009.
So perhaps my memory is faulty.