14 ms·

Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

509 points by weu 13y ago

coldcode 13y ago
Yet a "safe" email system is now gone. A better idea would be to move yourself and your encrypted email company to a country that will let you keep providing such a useful service (assuming there is one).
- mtgx 13y ago
  With NZ becoming less safe, it seems that's exactly what Mega intends to do for its storage service and the upcoming secure e-mail service. If he does it right, it could fill the space left Lavabit and Silent Mail. https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-will-move-mega-privacy-services-to-iceland-to-avoid-spying-130809/ https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-will-move-mega-privacy-s...
- conductor 13y ago
  Email is not safe, by design. Even if you do encrypt the contents using PGP or GPG, the headers are too much exposure. They will know who when and with whom you correspond, and all the hosts the mail passed through (if you are not using anonymous re-mailers). The current implementation of email is "defective by design". But _there_are_ alternatives [1], you must just start using them. [1] RetroShare, BitMessage, I2P Bote, Freenet + Frost and some others, which haven't tried yet.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    It might sound odd, but I think an easier solution is to commit to being persecuted by the tyranny. The alternatives are to prevent it or live under it, committing to the persecution should encourage prevention.
    - budgi3 13y ago
      I don't understand.
      - maxerickson 13y ago
        A robust and open society is a better weapon against tyranny than a well managed public profile.
- mcv 13y ago
  It's definitely becoming clear that the US stopped being a suitable country for companies interested in providing such services.
ck2 13y ago
How is it possible for Snowden to be inspired any further? He sacrified his life for us. He is the inspiration. Certainly no president in the next few terms will rest until he is rendered, he has to look over his shoulder now forever. Thank you for your sacrifice Mr. Snowden.
- anovikov 13y ago
  Sounds almost like he self-immolated. Russia is not such a bad place after all, for people with cash, and as a good professional he will certainly get some, and will enjoy celebrity status, and KGB will care for him rather than scare him.
  - Raphmedia 13y ago
    Good bye all your friends. Good bye your childhood house. Good bye your parents. And what I think should stands as the most important for people of your country... Good bye America. Yep, sounds like he sacrificed his life. Sure, he can build a new one. But his last one? Pretty much destroyed.
    - Ziomislaw 13y ago
      I've read he also dumped his girlfriend before he leaked (to save her from US revenge). Imagine you have to dump your loved one (against your wishes).
      - anovikov 13y ago
        okay okay, i am not doubting Snowden is a good guy. I am just trying to tell there is nothing so tragic in his current situation (while of course, he risked much more). One day life will pay him back for this. And for now, he will be just fine. And there are plenty of good girls to date in Russia (and many of them are already attacking him).
        Raphmedia 13y ago
spodek 13y ago
"Can we call it a police state now?" I saw the question on Reddit after a different revelation last month. I feel like we're going to ask that question more and more. I can only hope more and more of us are inspired, as Snowden was by Levinson (Lavabit's CEO) and many of us have been by both of them, and we act to protect ourselves and constrain our governments from overreaching to where they can't help repeating the disasters of previous overreaching governments.
- criley2 13y ago
  My reply on Reddit when I see people bring that up is simple: You insult people who have experienced a police state by calling what we are experiencing a police state. A police state has no distinction between legislation and executive. Our legislation is currently investigating the president for: * CIA coverup of the attack on our Benghazi consulate' * IRS targeting of political opposition They're planning on using their primary power, the power over our nations money, to enforce not only strict budget cuts, but requiring that the President's signature legislative victory be repealed. That's before we discuss the court and how they've treated the President. Remember when they threw out his NLRB nominations as unconstitutional? Now someone will bring up spying, but I urge you to realize that Congressional distaste for spying is centralized among the less important Congresspeople. Our leadership on both sides of the aisle is largely supportive of the infrastructure, seeing as they wrote and passed all of the laws that make it possibly. That's not an executive behaving without regard to legislation, it's one working with them. I don't see a police state, and I think being cavalier with terminology does a grave injustice to lessons of the past and the people who have experienced (and are experiencing) a totalitarian government with truly no checks and balances.
  - roc 13y ago
    So... as long as there are two or more parties within the State, squabbling about issues unrelated to the over-reach of executive power, spying, police militarization, etc -- it's not a Police State? Surely every police state has had factions that have vied for political primacy via such side-shows. That can't possibly be a disqualifier.
  - 13y ago
mtgx 13y ago
Snowden: "Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests the same way". Indeed, they must. Your move Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple.
- MrKurtz 13y ago
  Shifting the blame and the burden for policy reform onto firms is not only silly but also unfair, you can't really expect them to shut down, they are not one man operations like Lavabit.
  - zokier 13y ago
    > you can't really expect them to shut down Why not?
  - greyman 13y ago
    It is not unfair. At least some of them, most notably Google and Facebook, actively allure their users to share more and more of their private data, while misleadingly claiming, that they are able to keep them safe. If more and more people will realize the risks of sharing their personal data with those companies, it can endanger their whole business model. So who should fight most vigorously, if not them? And nobody says they have to immediately shut down.
    - MrKurtz 13y ago
      You can't declare that they're not fighting because you have no knowledge of what is being done by their lawyers and lobbyists, especially since the courts involved are secret. Lobbying scales better than shutting down or suspending service.
      - craigching 13y ago
        Right, we have no knowledge that they're fighting for us. And until we do, we put our money where our mouths are, stop using their services until we can be sure they're honoring our privacy. If anyone is able to fight, it's them, not the small businesses. So put the burden on them, if they want our data, then prove they can keep it safe.
MWil 13y ago
Why is Lavabit, based out of Texas, appealing in the Fourth Circuit (Maryland, West VA, Virginia, North and South Carolina)?
- dspillett 13y ago
  Same reason more patent cases are taken to east Texas: some states seem more favourable than others to certain parties in certain types of case.
  - MWil 13y ago
    Patent cases are civil, you can absolutely choose where you want to go, correct. I can't imagine the same is true for which jurisdiction the government uses in handing down a NSL...as I type this I wonder if it came out of Maryland though...
- speeder 13y ago
  Because NSA, CIA, etc... are in Maryland and Virginia?
  - MWil 13y ago
    Jurisdiction works on the defendant, not the plaintiff/prosecution (or rather, it's waived for them since they chose to initiate the action). So yes, if the NSA and CIA already have proof that Lavabit serves some minimum amount of customers in those states then it would be proper to bring it in that federal district. But it seems like they a) wouldn't have the proof needed until they got access to lavabit's assets or b) if they had the proof, they wouldn't need formal access to lavabit's assets Kind of a circular problem but of course since we don't know what he's appealing and why... Edit: Actually they could just use credit card information to establish customers so nvm Edit2: Now that I've read a copy of the search warrant linked by someone else in this thread, I see what's going on
grandalf 13y ago
This is the kind of scenario one would expect to find if encryption were introduced into a totalitarian society.
eliasmacpherson 13y ago
"Note how a country's human rights problems becomes of interest to the US political and media class only when that country defies the US" I am glad Greenwald has cottoned on to this and also made pointed remarks on the use of the abuses of others to question the ethics of Assange and Snowden in their "choice" of destination. It's reminiscent of the cold war retort from the soviets. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
mhurron 13y ago
And now we have completed the move to the story is about Snowden. I wonder what his favorite food is? What is his favorite band? Where is his favorite place to shop? What does he think of the architecture of St. Basils? A few more weeks and it will be 'Privacy Expert Snowden says...' and no one will remember why he's even famous.
- rthomas6 13y ago
  Stop assailing our great leader Snowden Christ.
  - thetrumanshow 13y ago
    Hmm... its possible for people to miss even massive changes in culture at the point of inflection. I personally felt it this morning when I was getting ready to reply to an email to a friend with a cold-war joke that in times past I would have never thought twice about sending. I didn't send.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Obviously you should have remembered to use the term "Dear Leader". Get it right next time.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  It's even more ironic when you consider that Greenwald has criticized others in the media for focusing more on Snowden and his day-to-day actions or location instead of the NSA revelations.
- greyman 13y ago
  You are exaggerating a bit, aren't you? The story is quite directly related to him, so what's wrong with asking about his opinion?
- detcader 13y ago
  Neither the story itself nor the actual title of the piece is about Snowden; whoever submitted the link to HN highlighted the comment by Snowden in their own title. Did you click the link? Did you read the article?
k-mcgrady 13y ago
I'd love to know what the consequences of making public these secret court orders and trials. One company standing up to the government and making public the actual content and threats could make a big difference.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- mcv 13y ago
  Why does it have to be Paypal? They've already proven themselves unreliable in cases such as this.
btipling 13y ago
Kind of sucks for those customers though, who can't get their email out. I get it, but man I'm glad I didn't use lavabit. The lavabit founder is probably going to have to deal with some serious civil legal problems, and maybe even criminal ones too. I don't know where I stand on this. I feel like the NSA can't respond because they're trapped by the same secrecy that they operate in from speaking out, although the lies and backtracking don't help, so this echo chamber is just amplifying itself to the point people are making big bold moves that hurt themselves (and their customers) when anyone has yet to demonstrate a single instance of where the NSA has misused their information (if you don't assume the DEA parallel reconstruction is using NSA data, which is maybe speculative or not). Well at least Obama is meeting with Tim Cook about this, because that makes sense. I've been thinking, why doesn't Tim Cook go talk to the president about this. Because...yeah.
jedbrown 13y ago
CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, 1994) addresses real-time monitoring of the communications of a single person, by way of a warrant. Lavabit has complied with warrants in the past [1] without shutting down services. Real-time interception does not fundamentally break Lavabit's security model [2] of encrypting incoming email and never storing the user's password, which is required to use their private key when they wish to access the mail. The implication in this shutdown is that the basic security model would be compromised, allowing untargeted retroactive snooping without needing to wait for the user to log in. Such a system is functionally equivalent to not having server-side encryption at all. Regardless of your stance on government snooping, this is just bad security, allowing a successful attacker to take all data in one shot rather than only being able to snoop on users currently accessing their mail. [1] http://ia600908.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.236204/gov.uscourts.mdd.236204.docket.html http://ia600908.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.2362... [2] http://possibility.com/LavabitArchitecture.html http://possibility.com/LavabitArchitecture.html
- MWil 13y ago
  Reading this is super interesting...ever heard of a Consent to Assume Online Identity Form?
jokoon 13y ago
The darker side of this, they can't speak about it because of state secrets, and any other individuals involved in other stuff has to deal with the same problem. I'd think, people would end up speaking out when they're threatened by the NSA to shut up, but they have nowhere to go for legal advice. I wonder if the government or the NSA could manage to shut down a class action if there would be one.
jusben1369 13y ago
Help me with this. A) I'm a non dev and b) I'm trying to cut to the chase vs use inflamed terms like Freedom of Speech and Police State. I'm piecing this together from the few comments I see that trying and get to the core of the issue. i) Lavabit's provided a communication service (email) that was uniquely designed so as the content's literally did not touch their servers. Therefore, if the NSA came to them wanting to look at communications by their users they would literally be told "It's impossible to do that" ii) NSA (or government in general) says "We cannot allow you to have a service that is completely untraceable. You need to begin having a way to trace this. iii) Lavabit's understands that this is their commercial value proposition. Should they be forced to do this they literally go out of business. iv) They fight it hard for a while but realize it's futile so shut up shop vs slowly go out of business. Is that right? As a side note I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the Greenwald/Snowden circular loop. It's very close to a propaganda loop and not all that different to other media outlets who get two like minded people and thus really just have a mutually agreeable conversation vs a reporting role. The danger being of course it's passed off as news by being positioned as such.
- dmix 13y ago
  > that was uniquely designed so as the content's literally did not touch their servers It only touched their servers in encrypted form, never plaintext. They would have had to wiretap their customer to retrieve content (for example, client side JS monitoring the next time the user accessed their email on the server) since all email was encrypted on the server harddrives and only accessible via the user. Instead if it wasn't encrypted they could have used a normal search warrant which would have given the police access to the plaintext content immediately. What was unique about Lavabit is that they never had the ability to decrypt the content without involving the user, since they never had the "private key".
wil421 13y ago
Now that we are seeing more and more publicity surrounding this issue and companies are at least attempting to be transparent, how can we spark a fundamental change in the way the Govt sees this issue. The public need to hold these people accountable in some fashion, criminally is probably out of the question. Whether it be by some investigation committee by congress, supreme court intervention, or simply voting the current incumbents out. We need to stop the Govt from just abiding by the letter of the laws and not by going with the Spirit of the law. The Government shouldnt be finding loop holes in their laws or playing games about the meaning of words when the are questioned by officials.
susi22 13y ago
This blew up more than I expected. It is the front page story now of Spiegel Online (one of the top German newspapers).
quantumpotato_ 13y ago
What's up with all of these news articles where person A thinks topic B is word "C", in quotes? Maybe I'm missing something, but just throwing words onto events and calling it news looks like unthoughtful neurolinguistic programming. "this thing is called 'horrifying'". Often the articles don't declare the subject, so we just see that an invisible someone has done something. Sort of like "Wall graffitied with "$GANGTAG" sign". Off topic, I know. Just having a tough time grappling with news articles titled like this..
cbhl 13y ago
I know we all trust pg and all... but are there non-US-based alternatives to Hacker News that we should be considering?

509 points by weu 13y ago

Yet a "safe" email system is now gone. A better idea would be to move yourself and your encrypted email company to a country that will let you keep providing such a useful service (assuming there is one).

mtgx 13y ago
With NZ becoming less safe, it seems that's exactly what Mega intends to do for its storage service and the upcoming secure e-mail service. If he does it right, it could fill the space left Lavabit and Silent Mail. https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-will-move-mega-privacy-services-to-iceland-to-avoid-spying-130809/ https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-will-move-mega-privacy-s...
conductor 13y ago
Email is not safe, by design. Even if you do encrypt the contents using PGP or GPG, the headers are too much exposure. They will know who when and with whom you correspond, and all the hosts the mail passed through (if you are not using anonymous re-mailers). The current implementation of email is "defective by design". But _there_are_ alternatives [1], you must just start using them. [1] RetroShare, BitMessage, I2P Bote, Freenet + Frost and some others, which haven't tried yet.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  It might sound odd, but I think an easier solution is to commit to being persecuted by the tyranny. The alternatives are to prevent it or live under it, committing to the persecution should encourage prevention.
  - budgi3 13y ago
    I don't understand.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      A robust and open society is a better weapon against tyranny than a well managed public profile.
mcv 13y ago
It's definitely becoming clear that the US stopped being a suitable country for companies interested in providing such services.

ck2 13y ago

How is it possible for Snowden to be inspired any further? He sacrified his life for us. He is the inspiration. Certainly no president in the next few terms will rest until he is rendered, he has to look over his shoulder now forever. Thank you for your sacrifice Mr. Snowden.

anovikov 13y ago
Sounds almost like he self-immolated. Russia is not such a bad place after all, for people with cash, and as a good professional he will certainly get some, and will enjoy celebrity status, and KGB will care for him rather than scare him.
- Raphmedia 13y ago
  Good bye all your friends. Good bye your childhood house. Good bye your parents. And what I think should stands as the most important for people of your country... Good bye America. Yep, sounds like he sacrificed his life. Sure, he can build a new one. But his last one? Pretty much destroyed.
  - Ziomislaw 13y ago
    I've read he also dumped his girlfriend before he leaked (to save her from US revenge). Imagine you have to dump your loved one (against your wishes).
    - anovikov 13y ago
      okay okay, i am not doubting Snowden is a good guy. I am just trying to tell there is nothing so tragic in his current situation (while of course, he risked much more). One day life will pay him back for this. And for now, he will be just fine. And there are plenty of good girls to date in Russia (and many of them are already attacking him).
      - Raphmedia 13y ago

spodek 13y ago

"Can we call it a police state now?" I saw the question on Reddit after a different revelation last month. I feel like we're going to ask that question more and more. I can only hope more and more of us are inspired, as Snowden was by Levinson (Lavabit's CEO) and many of us have been by both of them, and we act to protect ourselves and constrain our governments from overreaching to where they can't help repeating the disasters of previous overreaching governments.

criley2 13y ago
My reply on Reddit when I see people bring that up is simple: You insult people who have experienced a police state by calling what we are experiencing a police state. A police state has no distinction between legislation and executive. Our legislation is currently investigating the president for: * CIA coverup of the attack on our Benghazi consulate' * IRS targeting of political opposition They're planning on using their primary power, the power over our nations money, to enforce not only strict budget cuts, but requiring that the President's signature legislative victory be repealed. That's before we discuss the court and how they've treated the President. Remember when they threw out his NLRB nominations as unconstitutional? Now someone will bring up spying, but I urge you to realize that Congressional distaste for spying is centralized among the less important Congresspeople. Our leadership on both sides of the aisle is largely supportive of the infrastructure, seeing as they wrote and passed all of the laws that make it possibly. That's not an executive behaving without regard to legislation, it's one working with them. I don't see a police state, and I think being cavalier with terminology does a grave injustice to lessons of the past and the people who have experienced (and are experiencing) a totalitarian government with truly no checks and balances.
- roc 13y ago
  So... as long as there are two or more parties within the State, squabbling about issues unrelated to the over-reach of executive power, spying, police militarization, etc -- it's not a Police State? Surely every police state has had factions that have vied for political primacy via such side-shows. That can't possibly be a disqualifier.
- 13y ago

mtgx 13y ago

Snowden: "Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests the same way". Indeed, they must. Your move Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple.

MrKurtz 13y ago
Shifting the blame and the burden for policy reform onto firms is not only silly but also unfair, you can't really expect them to shut down, they are not one man operations like Lavabit.
- zokier 13y ago
  > you can't really expect them to shut down Why not?
- greyman 13y ago
  It is not unfair. At least some of them, most notably Google and Facebook, actively allure their users to share more and more of their private data, while misleadingly claiming, that they are able to keep them safe. If more and more people will realize the risks of sharing their personal data with those companies, it can endanger their whole business model. So who should fight most vigorously, if not them? And nobody says they have to immediately shut down.
  - MrKurtz 13y ago
    You can't declare that they're not fighting because you have no knowledge of what is being done by their lawyers and lobbyists, especially since the courts involved are secret. Lobbying scales better than shutting down or suspending service.
    - craigching 13y ago
      Right, we have no knowledge that they're fighting for us. And until we do, we put our money where our mouths are, stop using their services until we can be sure they're honoring our privacy. If anyone is able to fight, it's them, not the small businesses. So put the burden on them, if they want our data, then prove they can keep it safe.

MWil 13y ago

Why is Lavabit, based out of Texas, appealing in the Fourth Circuit (Maryland, West VA, Virginia, North and South Carolina)?

dspillett 13y ago
Same reason more patent cases are taken to east Texas: some states seem more favourable than others to certain parties in certain types of case.
- MWil 13y ago
  Patent cases are civil, you can absolutely choose where you want to go, correct. I can't imagine the same is true for which jurisdiction the government uses in handing down a NSL...as I type this I wonder if it came out of Maryland though...
speeder 13y ago
Because NSA, CIA, etc... are in Maryland and Virginia?
- MWil 13y ago
  Jurisdiction works on the defendant, not the plaintiff/prosecution (or rather, it's waived for them since they chose to initiate the action). So yes, if the NSA and CIA already have proof that Lavabit serves some minimum amount of customers in those states then it would be proper to bring it in that federal district. But it seems like they a) wouldn't have the proof needed until they got access to lavabit's assets or b) if they had the proof, they wouldn't need formal access to lavabit's assets Kind of a circular problem but of course since we don't know what he's appealing and why... Edit: Actually they could just use credit card information to establish customers so nvm Edit2: Now that I've read a copy of the search warrant linked by someone else in this thread, I see what's going on

grandalf 13y ago

This is the kind of scenario one would expect to find if encryption were introduced into a totalitarian society.

eliasmacpherson 13y ago

"Note how a country's human rights problems becomes of interest to the US political and media class only when that country defies the US" I am glad Greenwald has cottoned on to this and also made pointed remarks on the use of the abuses of others to question the ethics of Assange and Snowden in their "choice" of destination. It's reminiscent of the cold war retort from the soviets. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

mhurron 13y ago

And now we have completed the move to the story is about Snowden. I wonder what his favorite food is? What is his favorite band? Where is his favorite place to shop? What does he think of the architecture of St. Basils? A few more weeks and it will be 'Privacy Expert Snowden says...' and no one will remember why he's even famous.

rthomas6 13y ago
Stop assailing our great leader Snowden Christ.
- thetrumanshow 13y ago
  Hmm... its possible for people to miss even massive changes in culture at the point of inflection. I personally felt it this morning when I was getting ready to reply to an email to a friend with a cold-war joke that in times past I would have never thought twice about sending. I didn't send.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Obviously you should have remembered to use the term "Dear Leader". Get it right next time.
brown9-2 13y ago
It's even more ironic when you consider that Greenwald has criticized others in the media for focusing more on Snowden and his day-to-day actions or location instead of the NSA revelations.
greyman 13y ago
You are exaggerating a bit, aren't you? The story is quite directly related to him, so what's wrong with asking about his opinion?
detcader 13y ago
Neither the story itself nor the actual title of the piece is about Snowden; whoever submitted the link to HN highlighted the comment by Snowden in their own title. Did you click the link? Did you read the article?

k-mcgrady 13y ago

I'd love to know what the consequences of making public these secret court orders and trials. One company standing up to the government and making public the actual content and threats could make a big difference.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

mcv 13y ago
Why does it have to be Paypal? They've already proven themselves unreliable in cases such as this.

btipling 13y ago

Kind of sucks for those customers though, who can't get their email out. I get it, but man I'm glad I didn't use lavabit. The lavabit founder is probably going to have to deal with some serious civil legal problems, and maybe even criminal ones too. I don't know where I stand on this. I feel like the NSA can't respond because they're trapped by the same secrecy that they operate in from speaking out, although the lies and backtracking don't help, so this echo chamber is just amplifying itself to the point people are making big bold moves that hurt themselves (and their customers) when anyone has yet to demonstrate a single instance of where the NSA has misused their information (if you don't assume the DEA parallel reconstruction is using NSA data, which is maybe speculative or not). Well at least Obama is meeting with Tim Cook about this, because that makes sense. I've been thinking, why doesn't Tim Cook go talk to the president about this. Because...yeah.

jedbrown 13y ago

CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, 1994) addresses real-time monitoring of the communications of a single person, by way of a warrant. Lavabit has complied with warrants in the past [1] without shutting down services. Real-time interception does not fundamentally break Lavabit's security model [2] of encrypting incoming email and never storing the user's password, which is required to use their private key when they wish to access the mail. The implication in this shutdown is that the basic security model would be compromised, allowing untargeted retroactive snooping without needing to wait for the user to log in. Such a system is functionally equivalent to not having server-side encryption at all. Regardless of your stance on government snooping, this is just bad security, allowing a successful attacker to take all data in one shot rather than only being able to snoop on users currently accessing their mail. [1] http://ia600908.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.236204/gov.uscourts.mdd.236204.docket.html http://ia600908.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.2362... [2] http://possibility.com/LavabitArchitecture.html http://possibility.com/LavabitArchitecture.html

MWil 13y ago
Reading this is super interesting...ever heard of a Consent to Assume Online Identity Form?

jokoon 13y ago

The darker side of this, they can't speak about it because of state secrets, and any other individuals involved in other stuff has to deal with the same problem. I'd think, people would end up speaking out when they're threatened by the NSA to shut up, but they have nowhere to go for legal advice. I wonder if the government or the NSA could manage to shut down a class action if there would be one.

jusben1369 13y ago

Help me with this. A) I'm a non dev and b) I'm trying to cut to the chase vs use inflamed terms like Freedom of Speech and Police State. I'm piecing this together from the few comments I see that trying and get to the core of the issue. i) Lavabit's provided a communication service (email) that was uniquely designed so as the content's literally did not touch their servers. Therefore, if the NSA came to them wanting to look at communications by their users they would literally be told "It's impossible to do that" ii) NSA (or government in general) says "We cannot allow you to have a service that is completely untraceable. You need to begin having a way to trace this. iii) Lavabit's understands that this is their commercial value proposition. Should they be forced to do this they literally go out of business. iv) They fight it hard for a while but realize it's futile so shut up shop vs slowly go out of business. Is that right? As a side note I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the Greenwald/Snowden circular loop. It's very close to a propaganda loop and not all that different to other media outlets who get two like minded people and thus really just have a mutually agreeable conversation vs a reporting role. The danger being of course it's passed off as news by being positioned as such.

dmix 13y ago
> that was uniquely designed so as the content's literally did not touch their servers It only touched their servers in encrypted form, never plaintext. They would have had to wiretap their customer to retrieve content (for example, client side JS monitoring the next time the user accessed their email on the server) since all email was encrypted on the server harddrives and only accessible via the user. Instead if it wasn't encrypted they could have used a normal search warrant which would have given the police access to the plaintext content immediately. What was unique about Lavabit is that they never had the ability to decrypt the content without involving the user, since they never had the "private key".

wil421 13y ago

Now that we are seeing more and more publicity surrounding this issue and companies are at least attempting to be transparent, how can we spark a fundamental change in the way the Govt sees this issue. The public need to hold these people accountable in some fashion, criminally is probably out of the question. Whether it be by some investigation committee by congress, supreme court intervention, or simply voting the current incumbents out. We need to stop the Govt from just abiding by the letter of the laws and not by going with the Spirit of the law. The Government shouldnt be finding loop holes in their laws or playing games about the meaning of words when the are questioned by officials.

susi22 13y ago

This blew up more than I expected. It is the front page story now of Spiegel Online (one of the top German newspapers).

quantumpotato_ 13y ago

What's up with all of these news articles where person A thinks topic B is word "C", in quotes? Maybe I'm missing something, but just throwing words onto events and calling it news looks like unthoughtful neurolinguistic programming. "this thing is called 'horrifying'". Often the articles don't declare the subject, so we just see that an invisible someone has done something. Sort of like "Wall graffitied with "$GANGTAG" sign". Off topic, I know. Just having a tough time grappling with news articles titled like this..

cbhl 13y ago

I know we all trust pg and all... but are there non-US-based alternatives to Hacker News that we should be considering?