After the drama of the past few months, Julian Assange could be forgiven for wishing that the world still communicated via passenger pigeon.
Seattle-based email provider Riseup’s “canary” expiration baffled the public for months and led to emotional, nonfactual accusations that Wikileaks had been “compromised” by state actors. But what is Riseup’s canary and how did an anomaly related to it cause so much concern? To explain that, it is necessary to outline the legal processes that made canaries necessary, how they work in relation to the law and what a canary is exactly.