That is why it is always college students who take the chances; (see student protests of the 1960s and the Tiananmen Square protests in the late 1980s), like all young people they think they are immortal and they don't have any tangible and valuable assets yet like a job or a spouse.
That's very interesting but in the OP he couldn't tell anyone, which makes me wonder how many people would need access to stop the canary message being sent.
I can imagine NSL-like letters being sent directly to individuals to coerce/threaten them into handing over data, without the management/legal team ever knowing.
Of course, having such a canary message is likely better than not having it.
Don't chicken out. It'd be a rare opportunity to do something good and strike back at the people who make this world a lot worse than it needs to be. Drake did the right thing, and although he was badly harmed, he doesn't regret it. The harm will fade away, but his feeling about himself will still be there.