Ethereum Foundation has received a confidential enquiry from a state authority, shows GitHub commit

Policy • March 20, 2024, 11:20AM EDT

Published 1 minute earlier on

Quick Take

The Ethereum Foundation has received a voluntary and confidential enquiry from an unspecified state authority, according to the foundation’s GitHub repository.
As a result, the foundation has removed the “Warrant Canary” from its website.

The Ethereum ETH +3.38% Foundation has received a voluntary and confidential enquiry from an unspecified state authority, according to the Foundation's GitHub repository.

"This commit removes a section of the footer as we have received a voluntary enquiry from a state authority that included a requirement for confidentiality," said Pablo Pettinari, a front-end developer at the Ethereum Foundation, in a commit on February 26.

The commit removed an image of a canary representing that the Ethereum Foundation has not been contacted by an agency in a way that required contact not to be disclosed. It also removed text that said, "The Ethereum Foundation (Stiftung Ethereum) has never been contacted by any agency anywhere in the world in a way which requires that contact not to be disclosed."

The Wayback Machine shows that the canary and the corresponding text were present in January. The website does not currently show either of them.

The canary was previously removed in 2018, but this seemed to have been due to a mistake. Since then, the canary image has been changed to the current version.

The Ethereum Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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