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A Government Error Just Revealed Snowden Was the Target in the Lavabit Case
- jacquesm 11y agoIf the mountain of papers is high enough someone will mess up. The funny thing is that this is symmetrical, the same kind of math that underlies 3 felonies a day applies to court filings like these. The more opportunities to mess up the bigger the chance that someone will mess up. That said I don't think that there is anybody out there who is shocked by this confirmation, it was as far as I'm concerned a certainty, the timing would have been too much of a coincidence.
- duncan_bayne 11y agoIt's worth noting that the same bunch of people responsible for this mistake are those who want the public to believe they're sufficiently responsible and trustworthy to: a) Safely store and analyse the results of mass public surveillance. b) Hold 'master' keys to encrypted systems. Of course no-one in the know seriously believes either claim, but this is a great counter-example to put to the general public.
- elpasi 11y agoOh, but we'll take WAY better care of the master key! We promise! Believe us!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- givan 11y agoThe biggest problem is not this mistake but the total control and surveillance they are seeking and the persecution of those that try to defy them like Snowden.
- taneq 11y agoAnd that right there is the central issue with the whole concept of a "trusted third party" in encryption. Three people can only keep a secret if two of them are dead.
- aranw 11y agoCouldn't even read the article due to Wired's anti-adblock banner.
- mordocai 11y agoublock origin appears to block/not trigger their banner
- Rumudiez 11y agoDitto for me
- anonbanker 11y agodoes that mean that it allows their ads/tracking? how is that better?
- skybrian 11y agoThey are teaching us to use incognito mode more often :-) (No cookies get saved, so it's a win as far as privacy goes.)
- aranw 11y agoI just tried disabling javascript for wired.com and actually found the experience of wired.com much nicer!
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- jdavis703 11y agoThis is the same kind of government we're expected to trust with private keys and source code from companies like Apple and Google. Of course there's been a long history of government not knowing how to secure IT infrastructure, including a data leak that exposed the identities of it's own undercover spies: http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/30/technology/china-opm-hack-us-spies/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/30/technology/china-opm-hack-us....
- joering2 11y agoIn the latest Testimony, Comey tried to brush-off Apple's statements saying that it is not Apple's business or place to decide or judge whether or not FBI is doing good job keeping citizen's data safe. I cannot imagine statement more de-attached from reality than that. If the companies like Apple who sells millions of products to customers and rely on customer's trust are not a good indication or source of information whether the Gov is doing good job, then I don't know who is... "We the People".... you'd think.
- markdown 11y agoThey don't like the concept of corporate personhood when it doesn't suit them.
- taneq 11y agoI don't think they're real big on the concept of personhood in any sense when it doesn't suit them.
- guelo 11y agoI'd rather we be precise in these type of conversations instead of using the general 'they'. Corporate personhood was a decision by the supreme court, a separate branch of government than the FBI. The FBI doesn't seem to like the Bill of Rights whether it applies to people or corporations.
- asquabventured 11y agoFBI wasn't responsible for the data being stolen by China, that was OPM[1], a completely separate and NON-security focused branch of government. From my point of view, whenever "we the people" demand more "answers/solutions" from the government, what ends up happening is more bureaucracy that ends up failing us all. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Office_of_Personnel_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Office_of_Person...
- ipsin 11y agoDoes this increase the chance of the order being vacated? What things can Levison still not talk about, aside from the identity of the target?
- nfbush 11y agoIf we knew you wouldn't have to ask haha, he talks more about it in this mail http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2016-March/028669.html http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2016-March/02...
- zik 11y agoSo an American government agency destroyed an American business merely as collateral damage of trying to persecute an unrelated guy who'd revealed their wrongdoing. And they won't face any consequences for doing this. Something is very wrong with this.
- beardog 11y agoIndeed, sad isn't it.
- serge2k 11y agoHe destroyed his own business. I do respect his morals, but I'm not clear what exactly he hoped to accomplish? Could you legally reveal the target of an active phone wiretap? Intercepting email metadata for a specific person under investigation seems like a reasonable thing for law enforcement to attempt. Is his problem with it the action, or the idea of a secretive court allowing this? The other issue is having to turn over encryption keys. This is much more of a grey area, and I can see why he would shut down rather than set that precedent. This is why if you want your data safe you should have the keys.
- ipsin 11y agoI think he hoped to avoid being forced to run a honeypot meant to capture Mr. Snowden's communications.
- late2part 11y agoHis moral stand wasn't for Snowden. He surmised the court would give the key to the Feds and they would use it to unencrypt things beyond the scope of the order. He stood on principle against the courts insistence that he trust the plaintiff to use the tool within the courts orders. The courts naievete is cringeworthy.
- Pyxl101 11y agoNo, that's not what happened. The government initially asked LavaBit to intercept and provide data for one user only. LavaBit had done this in the past for FBI on other cases. However, the owner dragged his feet for no legally defensible reason responding to this particular request, and asked for compensation et cetera, and so the government demanded the SSL keys to do it themselves.
- tptacek 11y agoWasn't this already known?
- jacquesm 11y agoIt was 99.9% certain, but it was never officially confirmed until now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit I don't think anybody had a reasonable doubt that it wasn't about Snowden, but it's nice to have confirmation from the horse's mouth.
- PeCaN 11y agoPerhaps that's why the article starts off with > It’s been one of the worst-kept secrets for years: the identity of the person the government was investigating in 2013 [...]
- aidenn0 11y agoIt was obvious to anyone with half-a-brain, due to strong circumstantial evidence, but was never confirmed.
- garrettgrimsley 11y agoFirst sentence of the article. >IT’S BEEN ONE of the worst-kept secrets for years: the identity of the person the government was investigating in 2013 when it served the secure email firm Lavabit with a court order demanding help spying on a particular customer. We all knew it, but it hadn't been confirmed by the government until now. See [0] for example: >The name of the target is redacted from the unsealed records, but the offenses under investigation are listed as violations of the Espionage Act and theft of government property — the exact charges that have been filed against NSA whistleblower Snowden in the same Virginia court. [0] http://www.wired.com/2013/10/lavabit_unsealed/ http://www.wired.com/2013/10/lavabit_unsealed/
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoSuspected, perhaps. Not known, AFAIK. (Which may merely mean not known by me.)
- frandroid 11y ago
- caf 11y agoWhy is Wired telling me I'm running an adblocker when I try to view this article? I'm not... (edit) Ahh - it turns out that Firefox's built-in "tracking protection" feature triggers their ad-blocker-blocker.
- joeblau 11y agohttps://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=en&tl=es&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2F2016%2F03%2Fgovernment-error-just-revealed-snowden-target-lavabit-case%2F&anno=2 https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=en&tl=es&u=h...
- drakenot 11y agoIf you temporarily disable javascript you can view the story.
- Karunamon 11y agoSafari Reader Mode disables this crap. I'm going to open a PR for uBlocks anti adblock killer list later.
- Houshalter 11y agoSomeone shared this a long time ago on an HN thread. Put this code into the url of a bookmark. Then click it to get rid of annoying popups and grey outs. It works on Chrome at least: javascript:(function(){document.styleSheets[0].addRule(".highlighted_to_remove","background:red !important");var e=function(e){if(e.keyCode==27){i()}};document.addEventListener("keydown",e);var t=function(e){e.stopPropagation();this.classList.add("highlighted_to_remove");return false};var n=function(e){e.stopPropagation();this.classList.remove("highlighted_to_remove");return false};var r=function(e){this.parentNode.removeChild(this);i();e.preventDefault();e.stopPropagation();return false};var i=function(){var i=0;var s=document;while(s=document.body.getElementsByTagName("*").item(i++)){s.removeEventListener("mouseover",t);s.removeEventListener("mouseout",n);s.removeEventListener("click",r);s.classList.remove("highlighted_to_remove")}document.removeEventListener("keydown",e)};var s=0;var o=document;while(o=document.body.getElementsByTagName("*").item(s++)){o.addEventListener("mouseover",t);o.addEventListener("mouseout",n);o.addEventListener("click",r)}})() The only downside is you lose the ability to scroll. : / I don't know how to fix that.
- hartator 11y agoIt was an open secret that Lavabit was targeted because of Snowden account there, but that's a really good thing to be sure for real, just for the sake of transparency. Even if in this case, it was non-intentional transparency.
- peterkelly 11y agoI wonder if the government employee who screwed up the redaction will face the same penalties of jail time that Ladar Levison was threatened with.
- pserwylo 11y agoI was thinking the same thing. Particularly because it was human error which released the information. If there was genuine human error on Ladar's part then I guess there would not be a lot of leniency. I don't know how the government expects human beings to keep secrets from everybody they ever know, until the end of time. The amount of times little things slip out in conversation when you don't mean to makes me think that it is only inevitable that somebody, someday, will make a similar mistake to the government here. I don't think they will get treated lightly when that happens, either.
- fixxer 11y agoBeyond the case itself, doesn't this sort of ineptitude illustrate exactly why we should not want the government holding the keys?
- thinkcomp 11y agoDocuments at: http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/2y256314e/virginia-eastern-district-court/usa-v-in-re-information-associated-with-redacted/ http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/2y256314e/virginia-eastern-...
- strathmeyer 11y agoNo Wired I'm not paying $1 to read your article.
- fit2rule 11y agoThe US Government just demonstrated exactly why we do not let technology decisions be made by government bureaucrats: mistakes get made. Today, its just an un-redacted email address. Tomorrow, it could be the keys to the back-door that the government wants to impose on the world.
- subverso 11y agoHello, I'm from Brazil. First time I read about this case. I'd like to know how Gov. managed to shut down the Lavabit. Which were the arguments?
- e12e 11y agoAs I recall, FBI contacted Lavabit, and asked for information on a single user. That would entail altering their system at the behest of the FBI, and they said no. Then FBI asked for the TLS private key, so the FBI could intercept users themselves. Lavabit said no, and ended up shutting down.
- oceanswave 11y agoJust shows that the FBI can't keep their own secrets, not to speak of keeping anyone else's.
- mnw21cam 11y agoWeb site broken - it says I have an ad blocker when I don't.
- twobuy 11y agoThis is important information, but man, I really applaud the writer for stretching the story "they forgot to redact his email" and repackaging it into 10-15 paragraphs.
- wsha 11y agoIs anyone else surprised that the government wanted information about Ed_Snowden@lavabit.com rather than cincinnatus@lavabit.com? Maybe they wanted both and just redacted cincinnatus@lavabit.com properly. I thought that was the account he was using for distributing information about the NSA documents he took.