Warrant canary
A regularly renewed statement that Private.Ki has received no secret orders. What it says, how often it is renewed, and how to read it if it ever stops.
A warrant canary is a public statement that a service has not received certain kinds of secret legal demands — typically orders that come with a gag clause forbidding the service from mentioning them. A service that is gagged cannot say "we received an order", but it can simply stop repeating "we have not". The canary is the thing that goes quiet.
The current statement
Last published: 11 September 2026. The canary is renewed at least once a month.
As of that date, Private.Ki states the following:
- We have not received any secret court orders, warrants, subpoenas or national-security requests requiring us to disclose user data while prohibiting disclosure of the request itself.
- We have not received any order requiring the installation of a backdoor, an interception mechanism, or any weakening of our encryption.
- We have not been compelled to provide decrypted user content or encryption keys.
- We are not subject to any gag order that prevents us from updating this statement.
Even under a valid order, the readable material we could produce is limited to what is listed in the "can see" rows of What our server can and cannot see. Message content, private keys and passphrases are not stored in a form we can read.
How to read the canary
- It is renewed on a schedule. If the "last published" date is more than a month old, treat that as a signal and check the transparency report and our website for an explanation.
- Absence is the message. A canary never states that an order has arrived, and it never discloses details. If the statement disappears or is no longer renewed, you may reasonably assume we are no longer able to make it.
- It is not proof. A missed update can have a mundane cause. A canary increases transparency where direct disclosure may be legally restricted; it does not replace the transparency report.
Where it is published
This page is the published statement. The "last published" date at the top is updated with each renewal; the wording is kept stable so that any change to it stands out.
Common questions
Why monthly and not weekly?
A monthly cadence is frequent enough that a missed renewal is noticed within weeks, and slow enough that a single operational delay does not produce false alarms. If the cadence changes, this page will say so.
Does the canary cover requests that are not secret?
No. Ordinary, non-gagged requests — if any — are counted in the transparency report. The canary is only about orders we would otherwise be forbidden to mention.
Can I verify the statement independently?
You can compare the "last published" date against the renewal schedule and keep your own copy of the wording. Background on the concept is on Wikipedia.