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The gag order is the whole point.

Read through it again - it is a positive, affirmative statement that we make each week (and make in three continents). A judge (or LEA, whatever) would have to compel us to make false public statements on an ongoing basis, and would have to further compel foreign (swiss) nationals to do likewise.

Can we be held in contempt, etc., for refusing to make public false statements ? Perhaps.

In reality, since rsync.net is not actually an ISP (we take pains to make sure we do not count as an ISP, since it allows us to skip things like the OP has posted) and since we host no publicly available materials, we're not likely to get a warrant. If we do, it's likely to be an extremely mundane act of discovery, etc. That would get added to the warrant canary and we would continue updating it.

In our 11 years of running this service (7 years under the "rsync.net" brand) we've not gotten a single one.

But the parent to these comments was speaking of taking a stand, which is why this was instituted - people do indeed need to make a stand. We refuse to live in a world with Lettres de Cachet, and that's that.



Thank you. This planet needs more people like you on it. I will also do everything in my power to prevent the future I see coming.


11 yrs without ever receiving a warrant.

That seems quite impressive.

And it suggests to me your customers are well-behaved. Is that how you would characterise them?

I also think it's a great selling point.

Maybe it's desirable not to have "unruly neighbors" in your "cloud service neighborhood".

We've seen plenty of examples what can happen when such neighbors draw attention to themselves.


The key is that our service is cold storage only. All access, regardless of protocol, is with a username and password - there is no anonymous access to data stored here.

So there is no "hosting" or publishing of any kind.

The unintended consequence of this that we are really starting to appreciate is that we are NOT an ISP. The definition is fluid, and there's no guarantee about future regulation, but up to this point every one of the major "provider" laws has not applied to us as we are currently structured.

So the reporting, the LEA interfaces, the logging, etc. - we have no more responsibility to perform these items than your bakery does.

We are not a web host, and we are not an ISP.




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