25 ms·

Lavabit abruptly shuts down

• mnml_ 13y ago
  They didn't even bother giving refunds ?
• JimWestergren 13y ago
  What about relocating to South America? Perhaps Bolivia? Bolivia is _really_ pissed about USA ... I know as I live here.
• kelvin0 13y ago
  The whole system is collapsing under it's own weight. There is no simple solution, we simply need to accept that the current power structure in place and anything resembling it will always cling to power for it's own sake. It's up to us to decide if we want to continue having our cake and eating it too. What I mean is that we cannot continue incensing our shiny techno-gadgets based system, and then also be surprised that the same system tries to keep itself 'on top' by whatever mean necessary. We need to change our attitudes and actions within the current system, anything else is simply a band-aid on an open wound.
• Zelphyr 13y ago
  I really wish he had chosen some other means for accepting donations. PayPal has gotten so bad that I literally can't donate money to a worthy cause because I can't even change my fucking address on file without some generic error message popping up.
• BinaryAcid 13y ago
  I just don't get it. Why not create and store the encryption keys client side? That way, even Lavabit would not have any keys to hand over. Just like Mega does.
• brass9 13y ago
  Since they've stopped providing service, they should opensource their stack.
• mrshu 13y ago
  It's very sad news. For those who didn't use it, Lavabit has been down for 2 days prior to releasing this statement. To give you an idea what it felt like I wrote up my experience here: http://mareksuppa.com/blog/notes/lavabit/ http://mareksuppa.com/blog/notes/lavabit/
• tareqak 13y ago
  Some questions given the reasons why they had to shutdown: 1. Can Lavabit now set up shop overseas (with a different TLD)? 2. If not 1, can Lavabit license their software infrastructure in such a way such that someone overseas can set up shop for them? 3. If not 2, can Lavabit open source their software such that someone anywhere else in world can start their own Lavabit? The point that I am trying to get across is that if Lavabit has been forced to shutdown through no wrongdoing of their own by the US government, a case can be made that certain American government actions are making American companies uncompetitive/non-viable in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. TL;DR jobs are leaving the United States.
  • toyg 13y ago
    Not knowing the actual crime, you cannot answer any of those questions. See, this is why "secret laws" are so bad: you cannot legally counteract because you don't know what's legal anymore.
    • tareqak 13y ago
      I am speculating because I am genuinely interested. Assuming this event is the result of an NSL, what can the owners do next? An NSL would have to have been served against an organization. If said organization no longer exists, there should be no reason why another organization that performs exactly the same activity as the first could not be formed. If the answer is no, then it's as if a coffee shop was destroyed by a hurricane, but now the government says you aren't allowed own/operate/license coffee shops anymore except the hurricane is actually an arm of the government. This event really gives a new meaning to "invisible hand", except this time, it's in the shape of a fist[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand
  • sneak 13y ago
    https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=sneak+obama+foreign https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=sneak+obama+fo... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6090048 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6090048 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985100 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985100 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5978036 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5978036
• mtgx 13y ago
  Source: https://lavabit.com/?repost=true https://lavabit.com/?repost=true This is very unfortunate and sad. I hope he wins in Court. The NSA/administration are really trying to destroy the last bit of privacy in the world, and they will fight relentlessly until they do (especially if the People aren't fighting back).
  • joering2 13y ago
    um okay. If it is what we think it is, what makes you think that he will wrestle with Feds if Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and other billion-dollars giants were not even interested pursuing the legal way? Most likely, this is all so secret with secret courts foreseeing secret rulings that unless he has solid capital to burn on legal defense, he won't get far. He won't get far probably either if he has the money. I am sure courts would stretched it in infinity. And I am sure the owner is businessman more than a libertarian.
    • SageRaven 13y ago
      Sometimes a David makes a bigger impression than a Goliath. It's been years since I've worked with Ladar. However, he's a man of great intelligence and principle. It's not unheard of for "the little guy" to take on the machine and win. I believe that Ladar will prevail in the end, and I hope he'll resume operations or come up with something even better. I'll be donating something as soon as I finish my post.
• Kelet 13y ago
  Crap, I had just recently migrated all of my accounts to my new Lavabit address, paid for a year of service, etc. Although I've seen some mentioned, what recommendations does HN have for a new e-mail service? Preferably something stable and also respecting of a user's privacy. Or perhaps you can only have 1 of the aforementioned attributes.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    • throwit1979 13y ago
      Which will work fine until countermail gets an NSL too. Hosting your own, in your physical posession, with mercury-switch or dead-man-switch triggered thermite self-destruct is really the only option left.
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      • aet 13y ago
        And, snail mail.
        • lightbritefight 13y ago
          Funny how the Fourth amendment still applies to the primary form of communication we don't use.
  • aleksis 13y ago
    I just lost access to my primary email account.
    • Kelet 13y ago
• raganwald 13y ago
  I like the part where he can't tell you why he's shutting down. As if we won't engage in rampant irresponsible speculation that they have told him to decrypt and forward everything to them in real time.
  • toyg 13y ago
    what would you have him do? He's clearly under NSL, so he can't tell you what he was asked for. This is the strongest statement he can legally make (in fact, i'm sure some US lawyers would argue that it's actually beyond that). I guess we now know how it must have felt to watch republican institutions spiral into tyranny in ancient Rome.
    • hga 13y ago
      Yes, unfortunately; I'm a student of that period of history and it's getting pretty bad by its standards. No proscriptions yet, though ... perhaps because that doesn't work so well with a well armed populace.
    • reedlaw 13y ago
      Hopefully he would become a whistleblower, but with such a bleak outcome for Snowden I can sympathize with his not wanting to.
  • a3n 13y ago
    You kind of have to assume that if you're a customer.
  • clamprecht 13y ago
    The standard way to get the story out is via "leaks". Someone could, gasp, hack into his email, get the story, and publish it.
  • mtgx 13y ago
    He's most likely under a gag order. I thought that was pretty obvious.
• koenigdavidmj 13y ago
  "I can't tell you the reason" is a rather blatant way of saying "National Security Letter".
  • aroman 13y ago
    At first I read your comment as "rather brilliant way" and I agreed with it more than your actual comment :)
• mathattack 13y ago
  This is a real shame. 10 years of work gone, and they have to ask for help for the legal bills.
• rsync 13y ago
  Time to donate to the EFF. They haven't been branded as a terrorist charity yet, AFAIK...
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • ck2 13y ago
    The head of the NSA branded them as "the next terrorists". http://www.salon.com/2013/08/06/cyberscare_ex_nsa_chief_calls_transparency_groups_hackers_next_terrorists/singleton/ http://www.salon.com/2013/08/06/cyberscare_ex_nsa_chief_call...
    • ToastyMallows 13y ago
      > “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years” Now that's a generalization if I ever heard one.
      • 0003 13y ago
        These people are in for another rude awakening.[1] [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_activists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_activists
      • pasbesoin 13y ago
        The following is a bit of a stretch, but the quoted abusive language from Hayden brings it to mind, as the movie "Eastern Promises" just came up in conversation the other day. There is a scene in "Eastern Promises" where the protagonist, a "deep cover" police officer infiltrating the Russian / Eastern European mob in London, is compelled to have sex with an enslaved woman in order to prove that he isn't gay. (Because, up to this point, he has not shown interest in these "usual" activities.) The quote from Hayden, after raising my ire, quickly made me think of this. So, Hayden is more or less saying that, um... "lack of demonstrated sexual prowess" is tantamount to being a misanthrope -- and worse, from the criminal justice perspective, a "criminal" (I'll refrain from using the t-word, including because it probably bumps the ranking of a post in today's data collection systems). Of course, one might presume to take it as implied also, that if you're gay, you belong to this group. That such a figure of authority can and does so loosely -- or perhaps purposefully -- bandy about such prejudiced language... These are not consummate professionals. They are... apparatchiks.
• EthanHeilman 13y ago
  The line "A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company." seems to suggest that he may be working to create lavabit outside the borders of "Mordor". Can he reopen it as a foreign business?
• dmix 13y ago
  From 2011: > Lavabit processes 70 gigabytes of data per day, is made up of 26 servers, hosts 260,000 email addresses, and processes 600,000 emails a day. That’s a lot of email. http://www.dbasoul.com/2011/1008.html http://www.dbasoul.com/2011/1008.html Update: According to their stats page, they had 410k email accounts hosted before shutdown https://twitter.com/georgemaschke/status/365553445538775040 https://twitter.com/georgemaschke/status/365553445538775040
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • trimbo 13y ago
    70 GB / 600K emails = 122KB per email. That's a large average even with headers. To put things in perspective, Costco's massive marketing email sent to me this morning is 138K including headers. So the question is, what were people sending though Lavabit that averaged 122K and would have attracted attention? Therein probably lies the reason for all of this.
    • nemothekid 13y ago
      A lot of outliers are screwing with that average. Think emails with powerpoint/keynote attachments, rich pdfs, photos, etc.
    • seanalltogether 13y ago
      The 70GB probably includes attachments, so quite a bit of that number could just be certain users sending large attachments on a regular basis.
    • dictum 13y ago
      If Lavabit allowed large attachments, I'd say photos. 122KB is the average. The majority of emails were probably 1-2KB. Then newsletters, around 50KB. Lastly, emails with attached photos, ~5MB. Probably follows a simple Pareto distribution: 20% of emails comprised 80% of the total storage required.
    • johngalt 13y ago
• lmkg 13y ago
  For the unfamiliar: Lavabit was a webmail service, that (claimed to) encrypt emails in such a way that they literally did not have access to the content stored on their own servers. The linked email would lend some credence to those claims. It was originally designed in contrast to gmail scanning your email for targeted advertising, but my imperfect memory says that their system should also have been resilient to "we have a warrant, hand over the data."
  • raganwald 13y ago
    Well, he may not have been able to hand over the old data, but he may have been asked to include an exploit for all mail going forward. That could have been as simple as the authorities inserting some middleware.
    • lawnchair_larry 13y ago
      This actually did happen with hushmail. It's hosted in Canada, but the US leaned on them hard enough that they ended up backdooring the client to let the feds snoop on the targeted user.
      • computer 13y ago
        Background: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/
      • 616c 13y ago
        That is not quite what happened. As the link below says, it was not an exploit. Users were warned that using pure IMAP access and/or webmail, which was a convenience feature and continues to be with them, would require your private key. It was recommended you do not do that, and use the provided Java applet or mobile app. The person in question in those criminal proceedings used one of those convenience functions, if memory serves. Not that defend Hushmail. I do not, fuck 'em for that. There are plenty of services like Lavabit that avoid that problem, but that requires intelligent users/criminals/what-have-you.
• th3byrdm4n 13y ago
  If I could afford it I would donate, big time, to them.
• plainOldText 13y ago
  I know I've said this before in one of the other threads, but I believe donating to their Legal Defense Fund is a sensible thing to do if you care about your rights. Link: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_b.. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_b....
• unethical_ban 13y ago
  I watched Casablanca the other night. SPOILERS I thought about how the Gestapo had Lazlow in their midst, at the same TABLE as them, and yet didn't do anything immediately other than deny him further travel. Of course, it's a movie, but it was an interesting thought. Nowadays, if Snowden were known to be hiding in a foreigner's Moroccan cafe, we'ds drone half the building. Also, I noticed the pride and the wonder that America inspired in the workers and patrons of Rick's. It was a symbol of freedom and opportunity. I wonder how many people see it that way now.
  • rhizome 13y ago
    It's only the people with the least amount of power, the least pull with authorities, who get droned.
  • toyg 13y ago
    Old European elites shared a common culture that went beyond borders, at times perversely so (e.g. the whole Geneva Convention mindset where war is all a big game in need of more gentlemanly rules). They respected each other more than they did their fellow countrymen from lower classes. It's the same today: you'd never see a Saudi billionaire droned, even if we knew he'd been "the real Osama" all along. Snowden is a little fish and as such he's being treated, as an example to his uppity peers. His friends are little fish, and as such are being burnt down without a second thought.
    • Dylan16807 13y ago
      Iterated prisoner's dilemma isn't exactly a 'perverse' way of looking at war. Taking the high road helps you more than it hurts you. And remember that a country taken with minimal casualties is going to be much less rebellious. Killing is not the goal of war.
• ics 13y ago
  I just signed up three days ago, and was exchanging mail with one of their reps about opening a couple more accounts with them. I went to log in last night and noticed that the service was down, which I thought was a little odd (since everything was down at once). I'm going to have to read this again later when I get a chance but for now, wow. I respect their decision but I'll bet the timing sure was bad for a lot of people (especially those coming to Lavabit specifically to escape what's going on here).
• RyanZAG 13y ago
  I'm in the process of moving any Saas offerings I use off USA-affiliated companies, but it's actually more difficult than I first thought. I believe there might even be a very profitable market in simply duplicating the functionality of Saas offerings at a higher price with security/privacy guarantees in Germany/HK/etc. Might be the next hot business to be in? You'd be surprised as to the number of people seeking alternatives at this point. EDIT: Relevant XKCD for people calling for technical solutions to the problem: http://xkcd.com/538/ http://xkcd.com/538/
  • grey-area 13y ago
    I'd love to believe that the authorities in Germany are not also tapping lines like France or the UK. Do we have any proof that is the case? I agree this has made me think twice about hosting in the us, but also about crossing national boundaries full stop without encrypting traffic.
    • junto 13y ago
      The difference is that the authorities in Germany don't have the legal framework to force someone to do this and threaten them to stay silent.
      • jbigelow76 13y ago
        Ostensibly the US doesn't have that framework either, the Constitution would seem to preclude it (I realize we are talking about a myriad of offenses at this point so it may get hazy). But as you can see, shit gets ignored. Secret government agencies in Germany could ignore laws there just as easily as the NSA does in the US.
      • chmars 13y ago
        There are no countries where you are allowed to go public on surveillance measures applied to your customers, user etc. – at least not before the surveillance has been completed. And while traditional surveillance measures have an end, today's +/- total surveillance is continous.
      • 13y ago
• kefs 13y ago
  Seems like it would make sense for users to demand that any US based service includes a warrant canary, just like rsync.net's implementation. A global canary + separate canaries for individual accounts would also make sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary http://rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt http://rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
  • tirant 13y ago
    There's an easy canary in this cases. I don't know how FBI/NSA notifications are received in the US. But you can communicate to your uses any FBI/NSA/LE notification before reading the content. Of course, the notification should be posted to a medium where you don't have further control over, so there's no way for you to remove the notification.
  • jaggederest 13y ago
    I don't think canaries are effective. You can't get around a court order just by mental gymnastics, they'll hold you in contempt. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I suspect that they'd simply order you to keep updating the canary.
    • kefs 13y ago
      I'm also unsure of their proven effectiveness, but how could they hold you in contempt for _not_ taking an action?
      • mikeash 13y ago
        I don't think it would be any different from holding you in contempt for doing something. The court notices that your inaction caused you to contravene a court order, and the court then holds you in contempt.
      • Karunamon 13y ago
        I have the same question. It's very odd for a court to compel positive action.
• grey-area 13y ago
  So he pretty much does say why he's shutting down, the US gov. has demanded access and he said no. Kudos for standing up for his users, and he does raise an interesting point at the end: This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States. The worst thing about this situation is that other governments like the UK, France and Germany are equally guilty. For history on lavabit, see the cache, this page is now gone: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=tablet-gws&site=&source=hp&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Flavabit.com%2Fhistory.html&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Flavabit.com%2Fhistory.html&gs_l=tablet-gws.3...1877.7996.0.9385.7.7.0.0.0.0.513.1492.0j1j0j1j1j1.4.0....2...1c.1j2.24.tablet-gws-psy..3.4.1436.lIv1Hdpu5EY&pbx=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=tablet-...
  • joering2 13y ago
    > Kudos for standing up for his users, Where did you get this one from? I think its a bit of a stretch to say he is "standing up to his users". I would rather say he is standing up against the GOV, and that's nice for a change, but we have no idea what has happened with all the emails residing on their servers. Knowing just a bit that I know how the us gov operates, I am pretty sure he was given two options at exact the same time: either you accept our black box, OR you will not. If you not, then you are not allowed to delete or alter any messages on your servers. Given the business lavabit was in, I am sure Feds will punish him to the extends of the law (or more) if he decides to "stand up to his users" and delete content of their mailboxes.
    • grey-area 13y ago
      Hello, I didn't say stand up to, but for (i.e. on behalf of) . The most he can do is stand up to the government, for his users, in court, deleting servers would not be a wise move, and I wouldn't expect it of him, would you? Just standing up and saying no in a climate like this takes some courage, for which I admire him.
      • 13y ago
• bgentry 13y ago
  How long until PayPal suspends their legal defense fund? On a serious note, if you want to donate to their defense fund, consider doing so anonymously. Pay cash for an Amex or Visa gift card, and use that to make your donation.
  • glitch003 13y ago
    If only there was some way to securely transfer money across the internet, psuedo-anonymously, without involving PayPal or banks. Almost like transferring coins via bits? Maybe someday someone will invent such a system. We can dream. Can you imagine how strange it would be if such a system already existed, and we failed to use it? But that could never happen.
  • hello_there 13y ago
    ...from a public terminal.
  • burke 13y ago
    This is a really great way to get their PayPal account frozen for sure. Abnormally high rates of Visa gift cards will absolutely trip all the fraud alarms.
  • prophet_ 13y ago
    I don't know where you live, but here in the Netherlands even for these disposable credit cards you need to present a valid passport/id.
• ferdo 13y ago
  Takeaway: > "This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States." It's kind of fitting. The nation that spawned the internet is the nation that's killing the internet biz on its own turf.
  • sentenza 13y ago
    I wonder if there is some historical regularity here. After all, my own country, "Das Land der Dichter und Denker" turned on its "Dichter und Denker" when it was at (or close to) the apex of intellectual achievement.
    • javert 13y ago
      Yes, there is a strong parallel between pre-Nazi Germany and current USA. Of course, Americans will not literally follow Nazi ideology. What we see in America is an increasing merger between industry and government. Finance is the most regulated sector; hence "too big to fail" and all the exploits pulled by big banks. Telecom is almost completely government controlled (through the graning of regulatory monopolies). The government spies on everyone all the time now. This is the fulfillment of Progressivism: regular people are ignorant, but we can fix all social ills through government control. It is also, literally, the fascist model. I sound like an immature teenager for saying that, but I mean it in the full, intellectual sense. tl;dr the American Progressive movement occurred in parallel, but to a must greater extent, in Weimar Germany. American Neo-conservativism is Progressivism in a right-wing flavor. The modern USA is Weimar Germany all over again. As the USA's societal ills continue to accelerate (because we're taking anti-corrective action instead of corrective action at every step), the USA will increasingly resemble a command-and-control system like Nazi Germany.
      • newnewnew 13y ago
        Also see "Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany" http://www.amazon.com/Three-New-Deals-Reflections-Roosevelts/dp/0312427433 http://www.amazon.com/Three-New-Deals-Reflections-Roosevelts... hattip: Moldbug
• tenpoundhammer 13y ago
  Sounds like any country willing to guarantee a snoop free environment could have a lot of servers hosted there. I'm thinking the Caymen islands of data. Set up a shell company and a shell server in the Caymens to protect your money and your customers.
  • ktsmith 13y ago
    This is sort of what Sealand data haven was supposed to be.
  • johnrob 13y ago
    Don't forget a physical shell to keep the U.S. marines at bay.
• Karunamon 13y ago
  Are there any countries, anywhere, where a person can store data outside the reach of the US government's illegal overreach? Any countries friendly to the US are right out. They can tap the lines, but there are ways around that. I just want to be able to park data where some twit with a piece of paper that says "NSA" on it can't get it retrieved or deleted. Any suggestions?
  • vlastik 13y ago
    Iceland should be OK
    • flixic 13y ago
      Iceland is a NATO country, and fairly friendly with USA.
      • vlastik 13y ago
        That's irrelevant in this case, please see http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-will-move-mega-privacy-services-to-iceland-to-avoid-spying-130809/ http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-will-move-mega-privacy-se... and more.
  • fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    But you have to get the data there. It most certainly isn't protected in transit.
    • Karunamon 13y ago
      Anything that I really care about will be. And if this is just bulk data, there's tar -czf | gpg -e | ssh
      • fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
        Okay well, no legal protection.
• Theory5 13y ago
  Well, that's it. I am now going to move everything onto my own infrastructure. I signed up for lavabit a while back, and I like them as a secondary email service; and now they just shut down!
• sage_joch 13y ago
  If Congress has passed laws abridging the freedom of speech, then those laws are illegitimate. Unfortunately, it feels as if speaking favorably of the Constitution is enough to get put on a watch list anymore.
  • gecko 13y ago
    Congress can legally pass laws abridging freedom of speech, and has always been able to do so. For example, if someone were to talk up and threaten my life, that is not legally protected speech. Nor is blackmail, for that matter, nor the famous adage of shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater. For that matter, Congress can legally restrict speech in certain national security issues, and has, again, done so for a very long time. The Supreme Court has (in my opinion, correctly) understood that restricting people handling classified documentation from repeating that information is, without extraordinary circumstances (more on that in a second), completely legal, for example. The trick here is the sheer breadth of the NSLs. I completely agree that they're unconstitutional, and I sincerely hope they are struck down in court. But I hope that I've just highlighted why this isn't a slam-dunk situation for those on the receiving end of an NSL. Add in that, at least so far, any disputes with NSLs have to be taken up with the FISA court, and even wins against NSLs don't actually count as binding precedent, because FISA itself does not create binding precedent. Congress can, in certain circumstances, make laws restricting freedom of speech. This isn't one of those instances. But suing our way to that conclusion will take time, money, and personal risk for the petitioner.
    • mattraibert 13y ago
      >the famous adage of shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time... > In 1969, the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action" (emphasis mine).
• junto 13y ago
  They should open source the whole thing. We can bring it to Germany. I believe we are legally allowed to tell the NSA to GFYS. Any people who have businesses in the US need to take a serious look at the risk now posed by their own government on the success of their business. One rogue customer and business could go down the toilet, or you'll be forced to bend your morals to suit a rogue secret fiefdom.
• skrowl 13y ago
  So.... what should we use now?
  • WhoIsSatoshi 13y ago
    Is MEGA (https://mega.co.nz/ https://mega.co.nz/) an acceptable company? What's the HN consensus on this? Kim Dotcom does appear a bit sketchy.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    • hnha 13y ago
      god, no. that weasel ran bbs systems for the whole purpose of ratting out warez users to the authorities, making money through it as he coorporated with a lawyer. he actively spied on the users. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schmitz#Werdegang https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schmitz#Werdegang never ever trust that piece of ....
    • reledi 13y ago
      In the last few months he's been very verbal about being pro-privacy and anti-NSA on his twitter feed [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/kimdotcom https://twitter.com/kimdotcom
  • AmVess 13y ago
    At the rate things are going, smoke signals encrypted with a one-time pad.
  • grote 13y ago
    I'd recommend https://MyKolab.com https://MyKolab.com It is 100% Open Source and hosted in Switzerland where the world's strongest privacy laws exist.
• superconductor 13y ago
  Can we get a list going of non-US alternatives of popular apps most of us use? Let's start with Dropbox. What's the alternative?
  • timtyrrell 13y ago
    Spideroak is the dropbox alternative
  • stass 13y ago
    What's wrong with rsync or Coda or Intermezzo?
  • zokier 13y ago
    > Let's start with Dropbox. What's the alternative? Seafile maybe?
  • Karunamon 13y ago
    I'd suggest Owncloud for that, on a server running in your own home. Encrypted file system (LUKS), the works. Pretty much identical to Dropbox and just as stable, IMHO. Pricewise? You can buy an HP Microserver for about $300 that's capable of 12TB of storage on the top end (more if you get fancy with external arrays), whack it into a APC UPS for another $50, and just run it off your home internet connection. Hang a free domain hame at afraid.org off of it, and run a script on the box to keep the hostname pointed at your dynamic IP if your ISP won't give you a static one on reasonable terms.
    • patrickdavey 13y ago
      afraid.org looks nice - thanks for sharing :)
  • ijl 13y ago
    See PRISM Break: https://prism-break.org/ https://prism-break.org/
  • rocky1138 13y ago
    See https://prism-break.org/ https://prism-break.org/
• lawl 13y ago
  I really would want to donate to them. But you know I kind of feel weary now connecting my PayPal Account with them. I hope some kind of organisation is standing up for them. Like EFF or something. Not because I don't trust them. But because I don't trust the NSA. They might flag me as a terrorist or something. Then again I'm probably already on this list for having some technical involvment with something the US gov doesn't like. I guess it purely a coincedence that Snowden used a lavabit address the last few weeks. I guess there is no relation at all.
  • jerfelix 13y ago
    There should be a bitcoin address for donations. There's no reason to trust me, but if you send me bitcoins, I'll convert to dollars and send to the fund. You preserve your anonymity. I'll convert all donations at the end of each month. 173WSQxBiwswTtMBxnnhGTZJtTy2RrdLgn
    • asdfadfasdf 13y ago
      I also have a bridge to sell you.
    • lawl 13y ago
      Thanks for the offer, unfortunately I don't have any bitcoins so i would first have to buy them. Which I would have to do with money that can be traced back to me...
  • Dosenpfand 13y ago
    If you're so easily intimidated why do you still post comments about the NSA on the internet?
    • aspensmonster 13y ago
      Because the list of mere sympathizers, while surely long, is not nearly as bad a list to find oneself on as a list of material supporters. Squeal all you want, but if you want to speak with your wallet... Watch out. That is of course assuming that donations are even possible and that the recipient is not the target of an international banking blockade designed specifically to financially starve politically undesirable organizations.
• Glyptodon 13y ago
  I've had a lavabit email as one of my main emails for years (close to when they first started) and this is a major inconvenience. I'm not sure I'll be able to change the email address associated with a lot of my various accounts now that they're offline.
  • vincentstorme 13y ago
    I'm in the same boat. Anyone know of other services similar to Lavabit?
    • vincentstorme 13y ago
      Switched to runbox: https://runbox.com/ https://runbox.com/
      • chopin 13y ago
        MD5 message authentication for the site. No PFS (ephemeral key exchange). Mixed content. I couldn't find a statement where the servers are hosted. Not exactly encouraging.
  • sigkill 13y ago
    Assuming you're using (and lavabit supported) custom domains, all you'd need to do is sign up for a dummy email address for now and go to your domain settings and reenter the MX records. But if it was an username@lavabit.com or something like that, then I'm afraid you're out of luck.
• revelation 13y ago
  The health page is still up: http://lavabit.com/health.html http://lavabit.com/health.html
• modeless 13y ago
  Please donate to their defense fund. It's not often you get a chance to directly support a cause like this. The link is at the bottom of http://lavabit.com/ http://lavabit.com/, but I'll repost it here: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=7BCR4A5W9PNN4 https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_b...
  • Tossrock 13y ago
    One of the benefits of a high-paying software industry job is that I can afford to support causes like this now. I suspect many other HN readers are in a similar position. I encourage everyone to give what they can, as standing up for our rights at the cost of ten years of labor is an incredibly difficult thing, and deserves reward.
  • smalltalk 13y ago
    I already donated when I paid for a service that I now can't use. How do I go about getting a reverse donation -- i.e., a refund?
  • teawithcarl 13y ago
    Done.
  • brightsize 13y ago
    Done.
  • nilved 13y ago
    Does the prepaid five years of service I can't use count as a donation? :) P.S. smalltalk, you're dead.
• raganwald 13y ago
  Seems like a good time to hunt through the wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20130116102854/http://raganwald.posterous.com/friendly-for-business http://web.archive.org/web/20130116102854/http://raganwald.p...
• oldgregg 13y ago
  dear god I hope he open sources his codebase.
• joyeuse6701 13y ago
  You know, all these counter measures we come up with are just 'patches' to a set of bugs in our society. We need to rewrite the damn thing. This will just become a cat and mouse game against our own gov't and indirect defensive movements are meaningless without some sort of offensive to change policy. This is becoming a full blown arms race over people's private information. The funding, the computational power, the human capital used to create these things... if the gov't can't or won't listen to the people's will and the situation is bad enough, then something will rise to replace the broken system. Someone's got to spearhead a defense of the individual.
  • WhoIsSatoshi 13y ago
    You're talking about Assange. He's currently running for australian senate spot. Read his book, spread the word.
    • joyeuse6701 13y ago
      I may have to.
  • mahyarm 13y ago
    Political & social realities are reactions to physical realities. Physical reality is changed by technology. This kind of dragnet communication surveillance was literally impossible in the 1960s. The social world is still changing in reaction to the existence of the birth control pill. Hell our social reality has already been fundamentally changed on many levels by facebook & smartphones world wide. It's a balance of both.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• DASD 13y ago
  Interesting thread from Email Discussions: http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=66968 http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=66968 If you're a SAAS provider, be aware if you need to shutdown that many users are not prepared for this. Several posters in the linked thread rely on a recover password feature sent to e-mail for access to other accounts. Not a prudent practice but this is common for many.
  • toyg 13y ago
    This is not an orderly shutdown, this is basically a civil disobedience act. As such, the more people are pissed off, the better (as long as their rage is channeled to the real culprits, i.e. the feds).
  • jdp23 13y ago
    Interesting thread, thanks for sharing. Huge difference between page 5 (when people still believe it's just a badly-handled storage system problem) and afterwards (when the true story is revealed).
• tn13 13y ago
  Shutting down of Lavabit makes us more safe from suicide bombers!
• dkulchenko 13y ago
  This is infuriating, and the worst part is that a clear solution isn't in sight. Sure, we can fight this in the courts, and a few secret programs might get shut down, but operations will just continue under a different name. We can encrypt our data, move our services and data offshore, but that just paints a big target on our heads - doesn't actually address the fundamental issue. This is supposed to be a democracy, but I don't see any democratic way of addressing this. What do we do?
  • mpyne 13y ago
    If the mere capability of surveillance is what upsets you, then I'd recommend yoga and encryption. Investigatory powers have been used in pretty much all nations for hundreds of years and so if your big plan is to remove the very ability for governments to do that, you're going to be in for a long and arduous slog. If instead your concern is with unchecked and expansive untargeted surveillance, we need to push hard for transparency and oversight, which is something that is politically viable and gets 99.9% of the benefit to the average person of surveillance not being possible at all.
  • Karunamon 13y ago
    Make the bastards work for it. Enough people using strong encryption (both for data over the wire and data at rest) makes big-data collection (can't dedupe random noise) and processing/datamining prohibitively expensive if not impossible. Nobody is getting in trouble for moving their data and services offshore. Aside from that? I'd suggest finding a few friendly people in various countries and establish a constant /dev/urandom | ssh | > /dev/null stream when your internet connection is idle.
    • davidw 13y ago
      I wonder if, more than crypto, false positives would make them work harder. They know who you are emailing too, and so likely are not going to target you in any case, since you are not part of an interesting network. But if you start talking about a movie, where they plan to detonate a dirty bomb in Times Square or something... Emacs automates this with M-x spook: morse War on Terrorism encryption Forte Blowpipe LLNL John Kerry Albright Kh-11 22nd SAS ANC Semtex SEAL Team 6 smuggle CIA Also, everyone here from the US has placed a phone call to their representatives to politely, succinctly, and clearly state their opposition to this stuff, right? Ultimately, a political solution is best. False positives make them waste their time, and there are a lot of them who probably really do care about catching genuinely bad people who want to do bad stuff. Just that they need less secrecy, more focus, and much more oversight.
• uptown 13y ago
  So we've hear stories of the big companies being targeted. Now a smaller company has been included. How small will this go for monitoring? Should we assume that any browser plugins are potential trojan horses for desktop targeting?
  • unimpressive 13y ago
    Why stop there? You can probably bully the smaller open source programmers who work on various utilities to backdoor their programs.
    • vdaniuk 13y ago
      Actually, open source provides plausible deniability where a programmer would be able to provide information about a backdoor to the community anonymously.
• mpyne 13y ago
  One big question I have for the legal beagles: It's understood (if not well-liked) that Fourth Amendment protections don't apply to data given to a third-party... What if, instead, you host server space within the U.S. and run your own software (email, listserv, whatever) and data on the leased hardware? I would think there's a good argument that Fourth Amendment protections then resume, and the domestic-ness of the server would also mean the NSA is not legally allowed to look at it, at least without a real Article III warrant. Do similar rights apply IRL, e.g. if you rent a storage closet, can law enforcement just open the door when they wish or do they need to get a warrant?
  • tootie 13y ago
    You need a warrant, but honestly we don't know if that isn't the case here. It's come up before that the NSA, FBI et al, serve warrants for encrypted data and can demand it be decrypted. Otherwise, services like lavabit are equivalent to Swiss bank accounts that are unreachable by any means, legitimate or otherwise. Realistically, this service was almost certainly hosting a ton a illegal activities.
    • mpyne 13y ago
      Well there we go then, Constitutional Fourth Amendment protections restored. But why do I get the impression that's not actually what we all were really asking for here?
      • Dylan16807 13y ago
        There are multiple overreaches. In this case the government is probably trying to pull a hushmail: getting the service provider to install spying equipment targeted at their users, and then sharing the spy data with the government. 1. The government should not be able to force this kind of spy equipment to be installed. 2. If we had good privacy laws it would be illegal for the company to even willingly share this data without a warrant.
        • tootie 13y ago
• photorized 13y ago
  Host in Russia. You all saw how the Snowden issue was handled. Just don't do anything that would attract FSB's attention.
  • jlgreco 13y ago
    Snowden isn't a general purpose tool. As far as Russia is concerned, he presents no threat to them; it's not like they are going to let him pursue a career in the FSB. This service however is a general purpose tool. It would attract the attention of the FSB immediately.
    • dsuth 13y ago
      Exactly. A lot of the fallout from this seems to be revolving around the idea of getting a service in 'not the USA'. Never mind the fact that: a) The US has been shown to actively compromise targets in their ally's jurisdictions and then share that information. We can assume allies are doing similar. b) Countries not allied to the US are not necessarily your friends either. Odd times, when the data havens proposed by Neal Stephenson in his sci-fi books start to look more and more important... to the citizens of (supposedly) the most freedom-loving country in the world.
  • Buzaga 13y ago
    Host in Brazil, we're never at war so spying, national security and etc budgets are always low, besides, we can barely handle basic stuff like education, security, public transport, so if there's a BRPrism, part of the money probably goes to some corrupt, and then it must be shitty!
• acuozzo 13y ago
  I only used webmail on Lavabit; not IMAP. All of my e-mail is gone. I was a paying user. WTF.
  • sneak 13y ago
    Why did you not make backups?
    • acuozzo 13y ago
      I only started using Lavabit a few months ago.
  • frenger 13y ago
    maybe not forever - sounds like he wants to relaunch it eventually. Good luck to you.
• nish1500 13y ago
  It won't be long before companies start introducing non-USA-affiliated as a feature.
  • grote 13y ago
    That's already happening. https://MyKolab.com https://MyKolab.com for example is heavily playing the hosted in Switzerland card.
• EdSharkey 13y ago
  When I read the Lavabit statement, I felt like this was "The Strike" Ayn Rand predicted. Guy took his marbles and left. Tough to be optimistic about our future after seeing this happen for realsies.
  • SmokyBorbon 13y ago
    Atlas shrugged and dropped the world wide web.
• smalltalk 13y ago
  Refunds for anyone? I can't believe this guy asks for a donation to his legal defense fund. I already donated when I paid for a service that I now can't use. How do I go about getting a reverse donation -- i.e., a refund?
• nsxwolf 13y ago
  If there's any upside to this news at all, it's a confirmation that encryption in general does frustrate the NSA's mission to some extent.
• joelrunyon 13y ago
  > I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Anyone know what happens if he just says "F it" and writes a massive blog post on what exactly happened or what exactly they said to him?
  • icesoldier 13y ago
    My understanding is that he'd disappear somehow, either silently or violently.
  • guelo 13y ago
    He'd probably go to jail immediately and then spend years working the case through the courts in the hopes of getting a Supreme Court decision striking the law down as unconstitutional.
    • hkarthik 13y ago
      Probably worse. They'll often go after family members (siblings, parents, extended family) and their businesses until you comply.
    • Buttons840 13y ago
      They'd probably put him next to a child molester who is server less time just to complete the circle of irony.
  • nakedrobot2 13y ago
    He goes to prison.
  • mortenjorck 13y ago
    He moves (or rather has already moved) to Russia.
    • rexreed 13y ago
• jka 13y ago
  I've posted this link on HN before, but it's potentially relevant - we might find out more, but it sounds like this might be the result of a National Security Letter preventing Ladar from talking about the reason behind the shutdown. I would suspect he has tried to protect his users from a request for information (NSLs are allegedly limited to metadata), but would prefer to discontinue the service than take the other possible legal action (silently disclosing information). Perhaps it is possible he will/has been forced to disclose information anyway. This link is a video featuring Nicholas Merrill who (if this is in fact NSL-related) went through a similar situation with his ISP Calyx, and gave as much information as legally possible about the frustrating process as a talk at the yearly Chaos Communication Congress in 2010. https://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4263.en.html https://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4263.en....
• guelo 13y ago
  The US government is destroying one of the few bright spots in the American economy with its out of control military. It is unconscionable. And the sad thing is it has been enabled by the betrayal by many of the web 2.0 giants, Facebook, Google etc. Google especially is sad to see since they were willing to forgo the Chinese market on principle, but then decided that taking on the authoritarian US government was too lucrative for principle to be involved. If Google had done what Lavabit just did we would be living in a freer country today.
  • sneak 13y ago
    I wrote an article a year or two ago entitled "Don't Be Evil, or comply with the PATRIOT Act?" The companies with the ability to move all operations out of US jurisdiction/coercion who don't do so are complicit in all of this.
    • Filligree 13y ago
      Which companies would that be? I can imagine what would happen to Google if, through some dark miracle, their leadership decided to do this. Most of their top engineers live in America. So do the leaders, but ignore them, we've already decided they want this. The employees don't, though: There are eleven thousand people, there, who'll need to be relocated to - where? Europe, probably Ireland, where many of them have never been. Certainly not where they have roots, or where their family is. Google has deep pockets. They can afford to pay massive relocation bonuses, and they'll have to do so. Still, this is eleven thousand people; we're probably talking about a billion plus, just to get a reasonable number of them to follow. After all, most of these engineers would be perfectly capable of finding work at a different company. Okay, so they've done that. They lost a lot of good people; probably a lot of their best people, the ones that care least about money. Still, they're now in Europe. Now what? Most of their infrastructure is still in the US. Compute clusters, god only knows how many. Storage clusters. User data, placed in the US under safe harbor provisions because an attempt at keeping it in Europe is unfeasible given the rather diverse tapestry of privacy laws here. They'll need to move it all to Europe. They'll need to figure out a place to put it, and they'll need to pay billions - quite a few - to rebuild and expand their infrastructure here. By the time this is all done, they'll have new problems. Realistically, they'll go bankrupt somewhere in the middle. And that's not mentioning possible reactions from the US government. It would be great if leaving the US was an option, but it really.. just isn't.
• joncfoo 13y ago
  Is there a way to verify that the service has been shut down for the reasons stated/(not-stated)? I want to call my political representatives and let them know that these secret court filings that prevent people from speaking about their case hurts businesses & individuals alike. Before I do that though I'd like be sure that the reason Lavabit shut down is due to the government's interference. Is there any way of finding out? Also, can someone recommend a trusted alternative?
• MyDogHasFleas 13y ago
  Where's the "I wish you hadn't done that, lavabit, I'm a customer and I feel very screwed over by this action" comments? Or is this appropriate for any SaaS vendor? You're OK with this? Should all customers, even those who really don't care if the NSA could be watching, be put out because some feel that this cause trumps actually doing business and having customer-vendor relationships? I could see someone suing an SaaS vendor for an action like this, actually. "You cost me $XX in actual costs and $YYY in lost business. Your TOS says nothing about your shutting down because the government asked you to do something you didn't agree with."
  • ThatGeoGuy 13y ago
    >Your TOS says nothing about your shutting down because the government asked you to do something you didn't agree with. Technically, you can't say that this happened, because they can't confirm that they shut down for this reason. In light of recent events this seems obvious, but in an actual court, you would not be allowed to use this as a sole defense.
  • dragonwriter 13y ago
    > I could see someone suing an SaaS vendor for an action like this, actually. So? A SaaS vendor that shuts down operations in to avoid complying with a mandate of a court is taking a major risk of losing all its assets to legal action by the government. On top of that, the risk of legal action by dissatisfied customer is a pretty small marginal cost. > "You cost me $XX in actual costs and $YYY in lost business. Your TOS says nothing about your shutting down because the government asked you to do something you didn't agree with." You'll probably find that, unless you have specific contract terms relating to expected costs of failure to provide service, expectation damages of the type you describe are barred by the foreseeability prong of the test for expectation damages.
  • HNaTTY 13y ago
    If you're buying a secure email service, the compromise of that security would be a bigger screw-job. Lavabit must have shut down in the interest of its customers, otherwise why would they have shut down?
  • 13y ago
• voodoochilo 13y ago
  does anybody know any alternatives to the lavabit free accounts? man, i am so fed up with those mf'ing feds in the us. now i have to migrate all my website registrations to a new provider without being able to receive cancellations on the lavabit addresses. F*CK!
• tehwalrus 13y ago
  I had just signed up for 2 years pro service, and had been wondering why thunderbird couldn't log in all day (and I've been waiting to send an email all day!) I also recently had a chat with their support about this (before purchasing,) and they told me something like "don't worry, we're not big enough to get hit by this stuff, and if we are we'll tell them where to shove it!" -- it looks like they were telling the truth.
• samstave 13y ago
  So this is the reality. 100% proven that there is utterly NO privacy nor any "legal" defense against the spying of the NSA. America has NO 4th amendment rights and encryption is now a criminal activity.
• scoofy 13y ago
  How in the hell are national security letters constitutional? It's mindboggling to me that they haven't reached the Supreme Court. I don't mean to sound like a hippie or patriotic douche, but it seem rather tyrannical that you aren't even allowed to talk about something that happened to you.
  • john_b 13y ago
    I have been wondering the same thing. They very clearly abridge on one's freedom of speech, so if they have been tested in the courts at all (?) then some mental & legal gymnastics were no doubt required to justify them, probably invoking analogies about "tradeoffs" of dubious validity in the justification. If someone knows of any court precedents here, I'd genuinely be interested in hearing & reading about it.
  • declan 13y ago
    Not a national security letter: https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/EujgUYbrEwv https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/EujgUYbr...
• MrGando 13y ago
  This is terrible, I'm thinking about migrating my personal stuff out of Digital Ocean to some VPS host under the Netherlands legislation or other... any suggestions?
  • nilved 13y ago
    moln.is
  • eqyiel 13y ago
    For a NL VPS host I would like to recommend tilaa.com. No affiliation, just a happy customer.
• rexreed 13y ago
  This may have something to do with it: http://bbs.boingboing.net/t/so-apparently-edward-snowden-uses-security-focused-email-service-lavabit/3645 http://bbs.boingboing.net/t/so-apparently-edward-snowden-use... And he references his troubles over the past six weeks, which would be pretty much perfect timing with this.
• mladenkovacevic 13y ago
  Hmm another tremor... I wonder how long until the big one hits.
  • helloNSA_ 13y ago
    This is big news to a persistent minority. The larger population will never care. They simply don't have the context required to understand the extent and severity of the problem.
    • mladenkovacevic 13y ago
      It's true.. I think Americans might sleep through the whole thing. It seems TV news doesn't even try to ask questions and whenever they do it's about where Edward Snowden might be and what Obama's favourite vegetable is.
• resplin 13y ago
  This is a great story about an ISP owner having to deal with National Security Letters: http://www.shiftfrequency.com/madison-ruppert-owner-of-small-utah-isp-describes-how-the-nsa-got-him-to-install-surveillance-equipment http://www.shiftfrequency.com/madison-ruppert-owner-of-small...
• dmead 13y ago
  http://gizmodo.com/somebody-read-government-goons-shut-down-edward-snow-1070103469?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow http://gizmodo.com/somebody-read-government-goons-shut-down-...
• spoiledtechie 13y ago
  When the FUCK did we become a nation that starts shutting things down that don't comply with the government? What really have we come to? Reminds me of Nazis Germany, except replace communist and socialist with Free Thinkers, The Innovators. First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
  • NegativeK 13y ago
    > When the FUCK did we become a nation that starts shutting things down that don't comply with the government? This is not new. When a company doesn't comply with fire code, the business is shut down. When a company doesn't comply with law enforcement, it's shut down. This is the case when the law is just or not (until the courts rule it unjust, best case.) But to your actual point: we've been a nation that enslaved an entire race, locked up another one because of war, genocided yet another, banned speech against the government, ruined careers of famous scientists and actors because of political affiliations, passed laws against sex acts, shot water cannons and unleashed dogs at protesters, shot others, tore up the shanty towns of veterans, trained our soldiers to be racist so they'd be more effective, classified encryption as munitions, and on and on and on and on. This NSA crap is infuriating, but pretending that we've suddenly turned into Nazi Germany (and conveniently ignoring our history, such as J. Edgar Hoover,) turns a complete blind eye to the fact that we've dealt with this before. We need to tell our representatives that this is not okay -- not hyperbolize it. Also, and most importantly, quoting things from the Holocaust is absolutely disrespectful to the survivors of the Holocaust and the millions who died. Not only is that poem diluted by it being towed out whenever a government does something that someone doesn't like, but your argument is better served by coming up with something original.
    • stass 13y ago
      > But to your actual point: we've been a nation that enslaved an entire race, locked up another one because of war, genocided yet another, banned speech against the government, ruined careers of famous scientists and actors because of political affiliations, passed laws against sex acts, shot water cannons and unleashed dogs at protesters, shot others, tore up the shanty towns of veterans, trained our soldiers to be racist so they'd be more effective, classified encryption as munitions, and on and on and on and on. Yes, and police in US has historically acted to protect the regime and not the citizens regardless of whether the citizen actions were justified and lawful or not. Environmentalists have been dealing with this for decades[1], so it's not something new and probably not getting worse: internet activists' homes could as well have been raided, family members handcuffed and their eyes pepper-sprayed. This is fairly common, unfortunately. The question is what do we do about it? [1] See the "If a tree falls" documentary for an excellent example.
• biomechanica 13y ago
  I support his dicision. I just wish there was some warning so I could have prepared for losing all of my contact information, etc. This couldn't have happened at a worse time as my backup server took a rather ultimate farewell yesterday. I really don't want to use gmail or hotmail, so what other service can I use? Ugh. It might be time to get back to the roots and invest more time and effort in decentralized services instead of relying on centralized services.
• nilved 13y ago
  Does anybody know of a good European VPS provider for self-hosted email? That seems to be the only way to go moving forward.
  • cheald 13y ago
    If you want security, avoid VPSes. Your VPS is at the mercy of the hypervisor. You need to own a physical machine under lock and key if you want to be assured of its security.
    • jasonkostempski 13y ago
      And your own army to defend it when whatever government has jurisdiction in the location of your servers demands access to it.
    • nilved 13y ago
      Thanks. I'm aware of the security implications. Please answer the question or don't reply.
• alan_cx 13y ago
  So, secret court case, started by a secret spy service gets an email service shut down. We know next to nothing, except the service went down, with out an open honest explanation. The owner is left with leaving a cryptic-ish message to their users. So, I ask again: at what point is it reasonable to use words like fascist, police state, etc? What is a reasonable tipping point?
  • marvin 13y ago
    I used a similar term, with the word "becoming" first about a month ago. Maybe we should start running regular polls. It's not a cliff you're going to fall off, it's more like slowly sinking into a pool of it.
  • PavlovsCat 13y ago
    If you'd simplify it as fascism being about control instead of, say, conscience and justice, then it certainly seems to continue to be headed in that direction: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/nsa-will-replace-most-their-potential-snowdens-machines/68153/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/nsa-will-rep...
• MarcScott 13y ago
  Can you imagine if this had been the response from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo when the FISA court demanded they hand over data? I commend Ladar Levison.
  • nilved 13y ago
    If I was using Google, Microsoft or Yahoo I wouldn't have found out that my primary email account was shut down abruptly, my subscription canceled without refund and my email lost without any ability to download it. Not sure if that's really a worthwhile tradeoff for the average person.
    • kbart 13y ago
      On the contrary, I believe millions of angry Gmail and Facebook users (and voters) COULD have influenced some politic decisions on this matter.
• dgregd 13y ago
  Is this really the end of freedom in the US? Does your constitution means nothing nowadays? Almost everybody here talks to move email elsewhere, etc. There are no positive comments. Does this mean that the US government has won and can do anything they want?
  • SmokyBorbon 13y ago
    It's over.
• siculars 13y ago
  Distributed cryptography/services in multiple jurisdictions is the only permanent solution or as a delaying tactic at a minimum. Where keys or parts of data or multiple onion style encryption rests in a chain of services distributed globally in multiple jurisdictions. Something like the Ceph file system but for everything.
• methehack 13y ago
  Maybe we should all just start writing letters again. Snoop that mutha fucka!
  • cracell 13y ago
    The USPS reportedly has some very expensive machines that can read letters without opening them now. I believe it was Russell Tice that said that, though I can't find the specific source at the moment. But it's technical feasible and a desirable tool to get around being unable to legally open letters.
• laureny 13y ago
  Doesn't the fact that Snowden was using Lavabit lend credence to the allegation that he has been leaking information? If you're just a regular joe who, one day, realizes that what he's working on is bad for the public and decides to release it to the public, surely you have had no reason to use an encrypted email service before this realization dawned on you.
  • DanBC 13y ago
    No. Some people are aware of the long history of government surveillance, or of the lack of privacy in regular email. Some of those people will have encrypted their email in an attempt to reduce the amount of casual snooping they leave themselves open to.
  • infinii 13y ago
    Are you implying there is debate on whether he "leaked" info? It's obvious he did. The real issue is that he revealed what the NSA was doing.
• declan 13y ago
  My initial guess about what the government did to Lavabit that forced Ladar Levison to shut it down: https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/EujgUYbrEwv https://plus.google.com/112961607570158342254/posts/EujgUYbr...
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• dendory 13y ago
  This will never go away, what we need is strong email encryption to become the norm. Then the US would need to go see the individual users if they wanted to spy.
• wellboy 13y ago
  Looks like the second hero from the NSA scandal emerges.
• yaiu 13y ago
  As a user I'm essentially fucked. I can't change emails since the service is shut down... and the money I paid is now gone.
  • MrGando 13y ago
    I'm guessing that you will receive some sort of notice on your data. You should reconsider foreign hosting the next time, this sucks.
• jorgecastillo 13y ago
  Maybe if you use Yandex Mail the US government will at least have to do the proper procedures in a Russian court, to get your data.
• pearjuice 13y ago
  Any word on what happens to our data?
• ozziegooen 13y ago
  Apparently they just cut off all email access. From Facebook: "Could you please at least forward the messages for a couple of days to some other e-mail accounts? I can't reset/change the e-mails I used on other websites because they require validation PER EMAIL." "While I approve of what you've chosen to do, I just purchased a decade of advance service from you, and you've left no contact addresses or information. Who are your customers supposed to speak to at this time?" "i do respect your decision. But as a long time lavabit customer(8 or so years) I am very upset. I have paid money every year to upgrade and have spam protection and now lost all my emails. I would have liked some notice and a forwarding option for us." https://www.facebook.com/KingLadar?fref=ts https://www.facebook.com/KingLadar?fref=ts
  • nwh 13y ago
    I doubt they truly have much choice in the matter. It sounds more like a pull-the-plug-and-run sort of situation than one that leaves any actual planning. As their servers now just flat out don't have an SMTP service running, it seems like a fairly reasonable guess.
• shirro 13y ago
  Anyone care to comment on the chances services like LastPass are compromised in some way? I would expect they would have been approached. Even if the data is end-to-end encrypted there have to be ways - injecting something client side etc.
• HNaTTY 13y ago
  Here's my speculation, to be buried 450 comments deep: The government said, "you must update your software to compromise your encryption, and deliver us this information we have a warrant for." Lavabit said, "well, no, that defeats the purpose of our business". The gov't said "we don't care, we have a valid warrant" and now Lavabit is out of business. If I'm right, nobody's files were compromised because Lavabit refused, but I imagine that doesn't bode well for returning user data because there could be huge legal consequences if one of the confirmed users is strongly suspected of XYZ. If I'm right, it shouldn't prevent the owner from starting a new secure email service outside of the US. I suggest Iceland.
• nilved 13y ago
  I regret giving Lavabit my business and more so paying for several years up front. This is immensely disrespectful.
  • epo 13y ago
    Jesus! The guy is being leaned on by the Government. This is his only option to maintain customer privacy. "disrespectful"? There aren't polite words to describe the contenpt I have for whiners like you.
    • nilved 13y ago
      Moving forward, yes. Why can't he provide content dumps?
• u2328 13y ago
  Any other Obama supporters out there so utterly disappointed in this administration? Call me naive, but good god this is depressing. Seems like the country at large is so much more willing to let this stuff slide because it's not Bush/Cheney doing it. Congrats Democrats. Your complicity here has pretty much converted me to a third-party voter.
• vermontdevil 13y ago
  Lavabit needs to contact their congress representative and raise stink. Explain to the representative that jobs and money is at stake. And explain to the local community how there will be jobs lost due to this behavior. We need to start getting on both local communities and their representatives to emphasize the long term dangers of NSA's actions towards tax revenues, jobs, etc. In other words speak their language and make them understand that inaction is not an option. And yeah spare me the comments about how all Congress representatives are owned by corporations etc. It is still possible to get your representative to pay attention as they still need votes for the next election every two years.
• throwaway420 13y ago
  Lavabit's UI was a bit imperfect, but their death is a horrible loss to people who were using it and looking to defend their privacy. Additionally, the fact that this guy running the service was clearly threatened with some kind of national security letter that clamped down on his freedom of speech is rage inducing. There's a lot of ridiculously smart folks on here who are making good money working on advertising, social networking, and other typical web 2.0 startups and companies. There's nothing wrong with these things, they are certainly enriching peoples' lives and create value. But if what is going on in the world isn't a clarion call for a lot of these smart people to look into startups, networks, services, software, open source projects, etc that try to defend peoples' privacy I don't know what is. I urge everybody to look at your notes, ideas, forgotten projects, and see what you can come up with to provide services and ideas and concepts that will work to defend people's security and privacy from government entities that have gone drunk with power. Not only is this vital to everybody's liberty, but there is a ridiculously huge business opportunity here for services and software that can provide some measure of defense for people. If we don't stop what is going on soon there will not long be a market for a lot of cloud based services that people are going to want to use.
• afarrell 13y ago
  Wired says "Court records show that, in June, Lavabit complied with a routine search warrant targeting a child pornography suspect in a federal case in Maryland. That suggests that Levison isn’t a privacy absolutist." Can anyone find me a primary source on this document? It is from http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/lavabit-snowden/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/lavabit-snowden/
  • Ningzhi 13y ago
    http://dblf27q6vp5m8.cloudfront.net/Lavabit_Joey006.pdf http://dblf27q6vp5m8.cloudfront.net/Lavabit_Joey006.pdf
• sycren 13y ago
  Would it be naive for me to ask if the private key can also be encrypted? User logs in, password is used to decrypt the private key which is used to decrypt the emails. I guess this method would mean that the password is not stored as such. Perhaps there is a method of encryption that you could use that generates different sentence structures and word choices instead of obfuscation. So even if a user tried to bruteforce the login, they would always get a message back in the language it was written with no idea if it was the correct message unless they demand the password from the user. Therefore, all the 'keys' can be handed over but it's all meaningless.
• chx 13y ago
  Do you know much coverage this extraordinary events gets in mainstream media? Nothing, zilch, nada. http://imgur.com/a/WyDKy http://imgur.com/a/WyDKy
  • MyDogHasFleas 13y ago
    Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/08/snowdens-e-mail-provider-is-closing-cannot-legally-say-why/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/08... You may not include the Drudge Report http://drudgereport.com http://drudgereport.com in your definition of MSM, but they have huge readership. They linked the WaPo story this morning.
• olsn 13y ago
  A "complicit in crimes against the American people" - he's just providing a tool, if he's a complicit then ANY weapon-/gun-manufacturer in the US is a complicit in armed crimes/murders against American citizens!
• LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
  In communism there was no progress exactly because of laws like this. Who wants to operate hosting business in the US now? Why not Asia? HK, Singapore? Or even New Zealand at this point. See how much business is lost. See how much Google, Yahoo, MS, Facebook are hurting now. That's true people will still use them, but not for business critical stuff. No way. In the name of catching a few idiots from a desert who try to blow up themselves they just handled over the whole IT industry to the rest of the world. How stupid you must be to do that?
  • Torkild 13y ago
    I'm sure some of the largest of the tech firms are getting something for their troubles.
• andy_ppp 13y ago
  Given what we know about all this; the NSA has a legal right to retain access to everything - you have no right to complain or to stop it (because of the terrorists/children/anything that'll wash), we can assume Google Glass is a dead product at this point right?
• khafra 13y ago
  Seems like a great time for cperciva to remain in Canada.
• fastfade 13y ago
  The USGov just shot Paul Revere's horse.