The context is: Suppose you've signed a NDA that also requires you not to disclose the existence of the NDA. Suppose someone asks you whether you signed this NDA. The NDA clearly prohibits you from answering yes. Answering no would be a lie. What about refusing to answer (e.g. you say "I'm not going to answer that." without explaining why) - is that allowed? Are you required to lie? (The original context is from https://manifold.markets/CodeandSolder/did-waves-severancerelated-confiden but this question is about the abstract hypothetical, not the specifics in that company)
This market resolves YES if by the end of 2023, someone posts in the comments a court ruling or other case law (from any US jurisdiction) in which someone was NOT required to lie in the above scenario and answer that they had not signed the NDA. For example, if someone sued somebody else for refusing to answer, and the court ruled that that was NOT a violation of the NDA. Otherwise resolves NO. Note - it is possible for there to exist case law in which someone was required to lie, and someone else was not required to lie, in which case it still resolves YES.
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Many companies and individuals have used "Warrant canaries" where they periodically state "I have not been NDAed/gag ordered as of <date>", and if they do get NDAed/gag ordered then they stop posting that message, thereby implicitly communicating its existence. To my knowledge, nobody has interpreted these NDAs or gag orders as requiring one to continue to lie and continue to post the message falsely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
A warrant canary is a method by which a communications service provider aims to implicitly inform its users that the provider has been served with a government subpoena despite legal prohibitions on revealing the existence of the subpoena. The warrant canary typically informs users that there has not been a court-issued subpoena as of a particular date. If the canary is not updated for the period specified by the host or if the warning is removed, users might assume the host has been served with such a subpoena. The intention is for a provider passively to warn users of the existence of a subpoena, albeit violating the spirit of a court order not to do so, while not violating the letter of the order.
The Wikipedia has info about case law in different countries. Australia has outlawed warrant canaries - you cannot reveal the non-existence of the order. That's different from requiring you to lie, it requires you not to post the warrant canary in the first place. In the US some rulings say the "Free Speech Clause prohibits compelling someone to speak against one's wishes". But others say that warrant canaries shouldn't work:
every lawyer I've spoken to has indicated that having a 'canary' you remove or choose not to update would likely have the same legal consequences as simply posting something that explicitly says you've received something."