> The alternative is just to leave the warrant canary and live happily after.
Another alternative would be to implement Binary Transparency, and make the app only download updates whose hashes appear in an independently-run jurisdictionally-decentralized append-only log. (Rolling out such a change might take too long to help the target of the current NSL, but it would protect future users, and announcing such a feature would itself be sending quite an important message).
I suppose if your business relies on keeping its source code secret, then you could just put an "if userName == the_target_mentioned_in_the_NSL" branch into the code, so that all your users receive the same update, but hopefully someone out there would be able to reverse engineer that code (perhaps after an anonymous tip-off).
Perhaps the government would be willing to pay for a software engineer to obfuscate the code enough that this malicious branch won't be detected in time, but I think that would put selective pressure on software companies to not distribute obfuscated binaries.
Another alternative would be to implement Binary Transparency, and make the app only download updates whose hashes appear in an independently-run jurisdictionally-decentralized append-only log. (Rolling out such a change might take too long to help the target of the current NSL, but it would protect future users, and announcing such a feature would itself be sending quite an important message).
I suppose if your business relies on keeping its source code secret, then you could just put an "if userName == the_target_mentioned_in_the_NSL" branch into the code, so that all your users receive the same update, but hopefully someone out there would be able to reverse engineer that code (perhaps after an anonymous tip-off).
Perhaps the government would be willing to pay for a software engineer to obfuscate the code enough that this malicious branch won't be detected in time, but I think that would put selective pressure on software companies to not distribute obfuscated binaries.