Guardian column: Ulysses pacts and spying hacks: warrant canaries and binary transparency

As the world’s governments exercise exciting new gag-order snooping warrants that companies can never, ever talk about, companies are trying out a variety of “Ulysses pacts” that automatically disclose secret spying orders, putting them out of business.

A “Ulysses pact” is a negotiating tactic in which one party voluntarily surrenders some freedom of action, named for the story of Ulysses ordering his men to tie him to the mast of his ship so that he couldn’t jump into the sea when he hea...