A warrant canary is a method by which a communications service provider aims to implicitly inform its users that the provider has been served with a government subpoena despite legal prohibitions on revealing the existence of the subpoena
A warrant canary is a method by which a communications service provider aims to implicitly inform its users that the provider has been served with a government subpoena despite legal prohibitions on revealing the existence of the subpoena
We think of canaries as birds, but there’s another canary I know about, but I don’t know the name.
It means you have a document or you tell a story, but each person gets a slightly different version of it, so when the document or story leaks, you know who told by looking for the detail and keeping track of who gets what version. Tom Clancy used it in his spy books in the 1980s and I appears figured it was real. The obvious counter is, as the journalist protecting your source, get the leak from two of them, spot the difference, and remove it or change that part.
Actually, the anime The Promised Neverland does it, too. Boy genius Norman tells two kids different places contraband can be found. He tells a third kid that he told them different locations. The third boy then goes to the headmistress and tells the wrong information. His contraband is safe and he knows who he can’t trust.
IDK if its true but I heard of cartographers doing something similar. Include some fictitious minor feature somewhere so you can demonstrate that someone has copied your map.
Paper towns. As in, towns that only exist on paper. There’s also a movie with that name, Paper Towns, though I can’t recall if it’s related to the concept. IIRC, it mentions the term at least. It’s absolutely true. Back when paper maps were a thing, they would put some random town in, and look for it in competitors’ maps.
Now that we have satnav, things like Google/Apple Maps and various others, I think they’re mostly a thing of the past.
If I remember correctly, Marvel/Disney started doing this with the MCU (along with not telling some cast like tom Holland spoilers because they suck at keeping quiet), according to some of those “behind the scenes” type youtube channels (heavy spoilers, MasterTainment, Nerdstalgic, etc)
I’ve heard Peter Jackson did this with the hobbit and George Lucas with star wars, but I don’t know how accurate those are, as I can’t even recall where I heard them. So massive tub of salt and all that…
I’ve actually done this myself, when telling a story I’ve changed the names of some people involved, and when I inevitably heard back from someone who shouldn’t have known, I know who told them based on what name are dropped. It helped cut someone shitty out of my life but I don’t like essentially lying to and testing my friends…
As a very recent example:
Canadian election databases use “canary traps”—and they work
That was super interesting, thanks for sharing
Easier said than done to just magically have a second source leaking information to you.
True, but I mean, if you did, you’d compare them and go from there.
Yes, all the canaries in today’s discussion are metaphorical references to the literal birds, the “canary in a coal mine.”
Coal miners were often killed by suffocation when they would accidentally release or encounter pockets of carbon monoxide, which was odorless and invisible. (Edit: also possibly other toxic gases) So they began carrying a canary in a cage with them. Being little, it was more susceptible than they. If the canary keeled over, you knew to get the hell out of there! Of course many canaries died. But the miners grew fond of their little yellow chirpers, and started to be more vigilant against the effects of the carbon monoxide. Like if the bird stopped singing. This was a win-win, because fewer miners died as well.
Edit to add: And they sometimes even attached a little O2 tank to the cage to save the canary. WWI tunnel mine exploding teams sometimes used canaries as well for the same thing.
Tyrion Lannister does this in Game of Thrones (I want to say in Clash of Kings, but it’s been like 15 years since I’ve read the books)
In the A Song of Ice and Fire books, followed by the unfortunate show made from them, Tyrion Lannister also does this with Little Finger, Varys, and Maester Pycelle. I’m pretty sure it’s also used in the Deniro/Pacino movie The Heat. I don’t think this exact story device really has a set name per se, but similar things have been called canary traps, so maybe that’s part of why you were reminded of it in relation to warrant canaries. Broadly speaking, it’s a mole hunt. A very similar concept but not exactly the same would be a steganographic leak test which is what @fizzle@quokk.au commented about.
I read the first four ASoIaF books, but lost interest waiting for book 5. But that absolutely sounds like something Tyrion would do. (I’ve seen the entire HBO series, but that doesn’t really count. I hope one day Martin decides to finish the story, though I suppose if I really cared, I could just read the fanfic “The North Remembers”. It sounds like it ends how I want it to (with the Starks coming out on top), though I was really pulling for a Jon/Dany wedding or at least alliance with a proper return to Targaryen form with two “good” ones leading the way.