10 ms·

Lavabit.com owner: 'I could be arrested' for resisting surveillance order

248 points by ghosh 13y ago

adventured 13y ago
The thing I find scary about that, is the idea that the only reason he probably hasn't been arrested is for PR concerns. If nobody had heard of Lavabit and he pulled this move, I believe they would have went after him without mercy. His profile is big enough right now that it would just add to the NSA scandal, prolonging the headlines, so they're debating on a political basis what to do with him (if anything).
- e12e 13y ago
  It'll be interesting to see if he ends up in jail over something similar to to the former Qwest CEO was charged with... It does seem like publicity (and public opinion) is the only defence, that works, to a certain extent: - William Binney (NSA) - "tricked" FBI to record evidence of malicious prosecution - Bradly Manning - got publicity, but was under military jurisdiction - Snowden - got publicity - is still(?) alive - Joseph Nacchio (qwest ceo) - was first indicted, then tried to claim being framed (not commenting on the truth of this, just the (public perception of) sequence of events - lavabit - early publicity, rides "Snowden"-wave. Hopefully that'll work. [edit: formatting]
  - 001sky 13y ago
    Joseph Nacchio (qwest ceo) - was a crook. not sure what he is doing in this list here. He got caught in a pump and dump, and did a lot of desperate things as CEO to enrich himself at the expense of other... Not really alot of mystery to that one.
    - e12e 13y ago
      Well, maybe. I've seen some commentators that aren't as sure, that the case is quite so clear cut. Assuming that he is guilty of the charges against him, it would still be interesting to know if he became a target of investigation as a result of refusing to cooperate with the NSA. I'm not saying that is the case, but that it could be the case.
      - 001sky 13y ago
        It was not (remotely likely) the case that the NSA made him do the illegal and unethical things that he did do. He was only convicted on a portion of those. In any event. That being said, It may have <likely> been the case that (1) Nacchio may have had access to information that (if made public) could have compromised/damaged the NSA's institutional interests and/or the reputation of its principals; and (2) he may well have threatened to make such information to become public. But (1) comes with the territory or running a bell operating company (US west); and (2) comes with the territory of being a desperate, CEO about to be thrown in Jail. Since these alternative explanations are alot simpler and easy to make sense of, Its not worth walking out on a limb to support the alternative hypothesis that the NSA somehow framed Nacchio. It would be (at best) like framing al capone for tax evasion, understanding it also to be a fact that he did evade taxes.
        e12e 13y ago
        I don't think NSA framed him. I'm saying NSA might have had a role to play in him being investigated/indited. Similar to how intelligence services (allegedly) watch "targets" with the aim to use any illegal/questionable activity to leverage them into assets. The activity might be fully illegal -- but an intelligence service might not care about that -- just about having something to hold over a potential asset. As I understand it -- the idea is that Qwest said no to implementing tapping in their NOCs, and that the investigation/charges of fraud/pump'n'dump etc were filed afterwards.
- a3n 13y ago
  I think the reason he hasn't been arrested is that the bureaucracy works slowly. I'm sure they're going through their decision processes and evidence gathering processes.
hartator 13y ago
Now, I feel more and more afraid to leave even a comment on any swoden related articles. This is not normal.
- tomchristie 13y ago
  Say what you think and say it loud. If everyone stays quiet, nothing changes.
  - pmr_ 13y ago
    Yes, or everyone that said something is simply getting arrested, barred from speaking about his charges, and possibly thrown into one of those cozy off-shore facilities with unclear legal status. There is an understandable fear that a large bureaucracy is simply going to go through with whatever they think 'is the law' no matter how many people state their request. This isn't some irrational fear out of the blue, people see it happening in their daily lives on much less threating topics and history has seen it happen on an existential level. Not everybody is important enough to be granted temporary asylum by some adversary of the 'Big Satan' and some of us life in countries that have already handed over their own citizens to some of its torture facilities without asking questions. Simply encouraging people to say things out loud when the system has already spun out of control so much is endangering them. We should rather educate people on forms of protest which are not going to be subdued so easily.
    - thaumasiotes 13y ago
      Let a hundred flowers bloom, right? You would have done well under that policy. I'd like to see a little more public noise before we get to the point where the government can have everyone who's publicly backed a certain viewpoint summarily executed, though. If you're too afraid of that endpoint, you end up actually helping to bring it about. We can provide enough background struggle that it never comes within the government's power to remove it all.
- eliasmacpherson 13y ago
  If you're that paranoid, I don't know how you can bring yourself to look at the articles. In for a penny, in for a pound.
AmVess 13y ago
"Because the government has barred Lavabit from disclosing the nature of its demands, we still don't know what information the government is seeking, or why it's seeking it," said Ben Wizner, a national security lawyer for the ACLU. "It's hard to have a debate about the reasonableness of the government's actions — or Lavabit's response, for that matter — when we don't know what we're debating." So there we have it, a modern-day Geheime Staatspolizei in the USA. I wonder what lunacy will pop up next.
- brador 13y ago
  For anyone interested, that's these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo
  - barking 13y ago
    I think that it's in the 'The Gulag Archipelago' where Solzhenitsyn says that by contrast with the NKVD/KGB, the gestapo look like gentlemen.
    - ash 13y ago
      Solzhenitsyn may be right. But he was biased, having been prosecuted by NKVD.
- marvin 13y ago
  He hasn't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court order. This case has much higher profile than the CEO who got in trouble a while ago. Lots of international newspapers have written stories about Lavabit after the shutdown. I think if Levison was arreted, it would be a turning point in the political implications of this case. From the slow response, it seems like the authorities are worried about doing this. And rightfully so.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    He hasn't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court order. I have to suspect that's because he was willing to shut down his company and make a big stink. It he hadn't done that, I think it would have been much easier for the feds to arrest some random guy in a Dallas apartment, suggesting that he's a nefarious hacker in league with Snowden and possibly other nefarious people. With 10k users, I'm sure they could find something to say that there were, say, "suspected drug dealers" using the service. It was very smart of him to get out front of the story. Now if the Feds go after him, he's the businessman taking a principled stand.
rorrr2 13y ago
There's one positive outcome of this sad story. We now know for a fact that NSA didn't (yet) break the encryption algorithms, that's why they need to perform these insane acts.
- e12e 13y ago
  Or: they did, but don't want to demonstrate that fact unless it absolutely necessary (memento Pearl Harbour...). Still, yeah, I think (hope) you're right. Another indication of this is what we know of what they recommend US Government/Military do wrt. encryption/information security ...
- Ygg2 13y ago
  Or they are too lazy to wait for the decryption to finish...
  - MacsHeadroom 13y ago
    Or maybe the NSA is a very large organization with many departments so secret that their capabilities and existence are on a need to know basis and not flaunted around unnecessarily just to save some time or effort?
    - Ygg2 13y ago
      Right, or they could be a bunch of incompetent idiots, which is way hilarious.
- a3n 13y ago
  Or maybe they'd just prefer instant clear text access rather than waiting however long it takes to break an encrypted text.
drunkenmasta 13y ago
I don't get it. Why doesn't someone just speak out on principle. Out of everyone who "can't" speak I would expect at least one to come out and do it even though it might get them into "trouble."
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  From what I've read the 'trouble' they can get into is serious prison time. I'm sure for most of these people it's not worth the risk considering how brazen the US government has been recently.
  - drunkenmasta 13y ago
    well someone has got to do it. Like Rosa Parks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks "On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled... NAACP organizers believed that Parks was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws though eventually her case became bogged down in the state courts.Parks' act of defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. "
    - wpietri 13y ago
      Sure, but you have to look at how many people got arrested, beaten, or lynched for equivalent actions to no benefit at all. For centuries. I admire Rosa Parks immensely; her action was the spark that lit a great fire. But there were plenty of sparks before her that made no immediate difference.
      - k-mcgrady 13y ago
        Exactly. Take Snowden for example. He has given up a hell of a lot and provided proof of serious government wrongdoing and the government has done nothing to remedy it, very few people in government have spoke out against it, and although the general public is aware and cares about it to a certain degree they are doing nothing about it.
icantthinkofone 13y ago
This guy's credibility was shot down pretty well here on HN and elsewhere earlier in the week. I wouldn't place much credence into anything he says.
- Kiro 13y ago
  Care to elaborate?
- epo 13y ago
  This guy is keeping the story on the news agenda loud and clear. I'm sure he doesn't care about the opinion of some Aspieish idiots on a discussion group. What's your credibility?
  - kamjam 13y ago
    This story was originally published on Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:44 PM EDT To be fair, the article is from 3 days ago. More likely someone just posted the link on HN. Also, it's not the guys fault is NBC News are a little slow in reporting a story...
    - uxp 13y ago
      I don't understand how the publication date of this article correlates to the subject of the article lacks credibility. Do you care to cite specific examples of how Lavabit's founder should not be trusted?
      - kamjam 13y ago
        This guy is keeping the story on the news agenda loud and clear. I was referring to this part of the comment, nothing else.
- ekidd 13y ago
  Downvoted for challenging the credibility of a political dissident without providing evidence. I'm perfectly willing to hear a case if you want to make one (links are fine), but simply asserting that his "credibility was shot down pretty well" is a sloppy debate tactic. In a case like this, I think it's important for people to actually examine the evidence on their own. Otherwise we become too susceptible to propaganda (on one side) and mistaken outrage (on the other).
altero 13y ago
Now it is just question of time when FBI finds child porn on his computer :-(
jusben1369 13y ago
Putting aside this story for one minute and looking at the larger picture one thing I find fascinating is how the protagonists are absolutely winning the PR battle. The irony here is that when Snowden or this owner go public the overly secretive government can't or won't reply in an effective manner. That secrecy, so effective when operating in the dark, is suddenly impotent when the light is shined on it. The only attempts at any type of rebuttal have come from Obama and have had little to no effect to change the tidal flow here. So we just get this one sided narrative with a "fresh" new story every 2 or 3 days. It may be disturbing that he can be arrested but is that really news to anyone here? What's the point of a surveillance order if you can't back it up? We lock people up for contempt of court. You have to have a stick if you want folks to comply. Yet here is this story a few days after the main story and just as Lavabit was falling off the global media front page. This keeps the issue alive and hammers the government again. All trademarks of an excellent PR campaign. This narrative is having a withering effect upon those driving these programs as politicians see their constituents slowly turn from understanding of the need for these programs to alarmed by them. That the government has been unable to mount any sort of credible counter story is pretty amazing to me and somewhat a relief. After all, true police states have amazing propaganda machines. This one feels reminiscent of an intern running marketing at a startup!
- Spooky23 13y ago
  The government has a very effective methodology for protecting things it deems important. Congress got a little feisty about these programs, and for a week we started hearing about "chatter" that was threatening US embassies. We closed embassies and said scary things. Then we bombed some Al Queda in the Arabian Peninsula folks in Yemen. The next day, with much less fanfare, it was reported that it wasn't "chatter" (which implies stuff from the NSA monitoring), but a specific warning from an official in the government of Yemen. These sorts of things are very effective at controlling Congress, especially House members. Nobody wants to be the Congressman who pushed to shutdown programs that thwart terrorists. At the end of the day, what you think doesn't matter. It's what your Congressional representatives think -- and the ability of the administration to manipulate the general public's sense of fear makes it difficult to dismantle these programs.
ds9 13y ago
Here is my hypothesis of the meaning of this story. What the government wanted was to trojan the code (collect passwords because the encryption was based on them), and do so invisibly to the users. Levison prevented this by shutting down the service - that is the real offence. The technicality on which he could be arrested is that he indicated the reason for the shutdown in the message to users on the front page - albeit only by implication. The importance of this, which I think that even many techies may be missing, is that service owners no longer have a choice of what code to run on their own servers. If you run a service that enables secure communications, you can be forced to subvert the code to the detriment of users and effeectively lie about it and deceive the users. You can refuse to participate by quitting the job (unless the 13th Amendment is also being trampled) - but according to the new, defacto US policy, you have to allow the service to continue in trojaned form, otherwise you're subject to prosecution for revealing the government wiretapping to the targets.
- anologwintermut 13y ago
  Seeing as Lavabit handled encryption and decryption server side, the order could have required them to retain messages after decryption. Or, less insidiously, just required them to retain messages they received prior to encrypting them. In both cases, they wouldn't have forced Lavabit to put in a backdoor, just keep what they had already. (though if they only stored decrypted emails in memory, that distinction is small). Remember, Lavabit voluntarily complied with other court orders, so they likely have the technical means to comply with what the feds want.
  - thecodeore 13y ago
    You have no idea what the feds want, and the previous "comply" was probably just turning over the information it had readily available including the raw cipher text which would be useless with out the key I do not believe for a second the NSA was looking simliar information.
  - werid 13y ago
    those "other court orders" could have been for accounts that were not encrypted, like the free accounts.
ericxb 13y ago
Related: here's an interview with the owner of an ISP who went through something similar. He was under a gag order for 6 years. The interview also has comments from the Lavabit owner and his lawyer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpRp-D5v5NQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpRp-D5v5NQ
WildUtah 13y ago
If you were going to open an encrypted email service today -- one that would work like Lavabit -- where in the world would you move to before opening it? Obviously, the USA is impossible. I'd suspect that the five Anglosphere nation secret police alliance countries are bad places, too ('Five Eyes': gb, oz, ca, us, nz). That leaves a lot of world to consider. Is Ireland better? It's the only first world English-speaking nation that retains some suspicion and independence toward the Washington Empire, but only because of the ugly history with Britain. Japan and Korea seem like bad choices because they're so close to and dependent on US military operations. Hong Kong and Singapore are subject to police state rules but usually operate extremely liberally; I wonder how it would go in those cities for a private communication service. Germany is making noise about resenting Anglosphere spying, and you could use an affordable Hetzner server. Looks more and more like that resentment is feigned and German secret police are probably learning Stasi tactics from the NSA. What do people think about Iceland or Switzerland. Is there anyplace in the FUSSR to consider? What other country would you nominate? Edit: How about Chile? There's a first world nation that welcomes net startups and has good reason to cooperate very little with the US secret police. After all, the current government is made up of moderate lefties that survived the CIA coup and political murder spree in the 1970s and 1980s.
keefe 13y ago
I hope he is, he knew what he was playing at.

248 points by ghosh 13y ago

The thing I find scary about that, is the idea that the only reason he probably hasn't been arrested is for PR concerns. If nobody had heard of Lavabit and he pulled this move, I believe they would have went after him without mercy. His profile is big enough right now that it would just add to the NSA scandal, prolonging the headlines, so they're debating on a political basis what to do with him (if anything).

e12e 13y ago
It'll be interesting to see if he ends up in jail over something similar to to the former Qwest CEO was charged with... It does seem like publicity (and public opinion) is the only defence, that works, to a certain extent: - William Binney (NSA) - "tricked" FBI to record evidence of malicious prosecution - Bradly Manning - got publicity, but was under military jurisdiction - Snowden - got publicity - is still(?) alive - Joseph Nacchio (qwest ceo) - was first indicted, then tried to claim being framed (not commenting on the truth of this, just the (public perception of) sequence of events - lavabit - early publicity, rides "Snowden"-wave. Hopefully that'll work. [edit: formatting]
- 001sky 13y ago
  Joseph Nacchio (qwest ceo) - was a crook. not sure what he is doing in this list here. He got caught in a pump and dump, and did a lot of desperate things as CEO to enrich himself at the expense of other... Not really alot of mystery to that one.
  - e12e 13y ago
    Well, maybe. I've seen some commentators that aren't as sure, that the case is quite so clear cut. Assuming that he is guilty of the charges against him, it would still be interesting to know if he became a target of investigation as a result of refusing to cooperate with the NSA. I'm not saying that is the case, but that it could be the case.
    - 001sky 13y ago
      It was not (remotely likely) the case that the NSA made him do the illegal and unethical things that he did do. He was only convicted on a portion of those. In any event. That being said, It may have <likely> been the case that (1) Nacchio may have had access to information that (if made public) could have compromised/damaged the NSA's institutional interests and/or the reputation of its principals; and (2) he may well have threatened to make such information to become public. But (1) comes with the territory or running a bell operating company (US west); and (2) comes with the territory of being a desperate, CEO about to be thrown in Jail. Since these alternative explanations are alot simpler and easy to make sense of, Its not worth walking out on a limb to support the alternative hypothesis that the NSA somehow framed Nacchio. It would be (at best) like framing al capone for tax evasion, understanding it also to be a fact that he did evade taxes.
      - e12e 13y ago
        I don't think NSA framed him. I'm saying NSA might have had a role to play in him being investigated/indited. Similar to how intelligence services (allegedly) watch "targets" with the aim to use any illegal/questionable activity to leverage them into assets. The activity might be fully illegal -- but an intelligence service might not care about that -- just about having something to hold over a potential asset. As I understand it -- the idea is that Qwest said no to implementing tapping in their NOCs, and that the investigation/charges of fraud/pump'n'dump etc were filed afterwards.
a3n 13y ago
I think the reason he hasn't been arrested is that the bureaucracy works slowly. I'm sure they're going through their decision processes and evidence gathering processes.

hartator 13y ago

Now, I feel more and more afraid to leave even a comment on any swoden related articles. This is not normal.

tomchristie 13y ago
Say what you think and say it loud. If everyone stays quiet, nothing changes.
- pmr_ 13y ago
  Yes, or everyone that said something is simply getting arrested, barred from speaking about his charges, and possibly thrown into one of those cozy off-shore facilities with unclear legal status. There is an understandable fear that a large bureaucracy is simply going to go through with whatever they think 'is the law' no matter how many people state their request. This isn't some irrational fear out of the blue, people see it happening in their daily lives on much less threating topics and history has seen it happen on an existential level. Not everybody is important enough to be granted temporary asylum by some adversary of the 'Big Satan' and some of us life in countries that have already handed over their own citizens to some of its torture facilities without asking questions. Simply encouraging people to say things out loud when the system has already spun out of control so much is endangering them. We should rather educate people on forms of protest which are not going to be subdued so easily.
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    Let a hundred flowers bloom, right? You would have done well under that policy. I'd like to see a little more public noise before we get to the point where the government can have everyone who's publicly backed a certain viewpoint summarily executed, though. If you're too afraid of that endpoint, you end up actually helping to bring it about. We can provide enough background struggle that it never comes within the government's power to remove it all.
eliasmacpherson 13y ago
If you're that paranoid, I don't know how you can bring yourself to look at the articles. In for a penny, in for a pound.

AmVess 13y ago

"Because the government has barred Lavabit from disclosing the nature of its demands, we still don't know what information the government is seeking, or why it's seeking it," said Ben Wizner, a national security lawyer for the ACLU. "It's hard to have a debate about the reasonableness of the government's actions — or Lavabit's response, for that matter — when we don't know what we're debating." So there we have it, a modern-day Geheime Staatspolizei in the USA. I wonder what lunacy will pop up next.

brador 13y ago
For anyone interested, that's these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo
- barking 13y ago
  I think that it's in the 'The Gulag Archipelago' where Solzhenitsyn says that by contrast with the NKVD/KGB, the gestapo look like gentlemen.
  - ash 13y ago
    Solzhenitsyn may be right. But he was biased, having been prosecuted by NKVD.
marvin 13y ago
He hasn't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court order. This case has much higher profile than the CEO who got in trouble a while ago. Lots of international newspapers have written stories about Lavabit after the shutdown. I think if Levison was arreted, it would be a turning point in the political implications of this case. From the slow response, it seems like the authorities are worried about doing this. And rightfully so.
- wpietri 13y ago
  He hasn't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court order. I have to suspect that's because he was willing to shut down his company and make a big stink. It he hadn't done that, I think it would have been much easier for the feds to arrest some random guy in a Dallas apartment, suggesting that he's a nefarious hacker in league with Snowden and possibly other nefarious people. With 10k users, I'm sure they could find something to say that there were, say, "suspected drug dealers" using the service. It was very smart of him to get out front of the story. Now if the Feds go after him, he's the businessman taking a principled stand.

rorrr2 13y ago

There's one positive outcome of this sad story. We now know for a fact that NSA didn't (yet) break the encryption algorithms, that's why they need to perform these insane acts.

e12e 13y ago
Or: they did, but don't want to demonstrate that fact unless it absolutely necessary (memento Pearl Harbour...). Still, yeah, I think (hope) you're right. Another indication of this is what we know of what they recommend US Government/Military do wrt. encryption/information security ...
Ygg2 13y ago
Or they are too lazy to wait for the decryption to finish...
- MacsHeadroom 13y ago
  Or maybe the NSA is a very large organization with many departments so secret that their capabilities and existence are on a need to know basis and not flaunted around unnecessarily just to save some time or effort?
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    Right, or they could be a bunch of incompetent idiots, which is way hilarious.
a3n 13y ago
Or maybe they'd just prefer instant clear text access rather than waiting however long it takes to break an encrypted text.

drunkenmasta 13y ago

I don't get it. Why doesn't someone just speak out on principle. Out of everyone who "can't" speak I would expect at least one to come out and do it even though it might get them into "trouble."

k-mcgrady 13y ago
From what I've read the 'trouble' they can get into is serious prison time. I'm sure for most of these people it's not worth the risk considering how brazen the US government has been recently.
- drunkenmasta 13y ago
  well someone has got to do it. Like Rosa Parks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks "On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled... NAACP organizers believed that Parks was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws though eventually her case became bogged down in the state courts.Parks' act of defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. "
  - wpietri 13y ago
    Sure, but you have to look at how many people got arrested, beaten, or lynched for equivalent actions to no benefit at all. For centuries. I admire Rosa Parks immensely; her action was the spark that lit a great fire. But there were plenty of sparks before her that made no immediate difference.
    - k-mcgrady 13y ago
      Exactly. Take Snowden for example. He has given up a hell of a lot and provided proof of serious government wrongdoing and the government has done nothing to remedy it, very few people in government have spoke out against it, and although the general public is aware and cares about it to a certain degree they are doing nothing about it.

icantthinkofone 13y ago

This guy's credibility was shot down pretty well here on HN and elsewhere earlier in the week. I wouldn't place much credence into anything he says.

Kiro 13y ago
Care to elaborate?
epo 13y ago
This guy is keeping the story on the news agenda loud and clear. I'm sure he doesn't care about the opinion of some Aspieish idiots on a discussion group. What's your credibility?
- kamjam 13y ago
  This story was originally published on Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:44 PM EDT To be fair, the article is from 3 days ago. More likely someone just posted the link on HN. Also, it's not the guys fault is NBC News are a little slow in reporting a story...
  - uxp 13y ago
    I don't understand how the publication date of this article correlates to the subject of the article lacks credibility. Do you care to cite specific examples of how Lavabit's founder should not be trusted?
    - kamjam 13y ago
      This guy is keeping the story on the news agenda loud and clear. I was referring to this part of the comment, nothing else.
ekidd 13y ago
Downvoted for challenging the credibility of a political dissident without providing evidence. I'm perfectly willing to hear a case if you want to make one (links are fine), but simply asserting that his "credibility was shot down pretty well" is a sloppy debate tactic. In a case like this, I think it's important for people to actually examine the evidence on their own. Otherwise we become too susceptible to propaganda (on one side) and mistaken outrage (on the other).

altero 13y ago

Now it is just question of time when FBI finds child porn on his computer :-(

jusben1369 13y ago

Putting aside this story for one minute and looking at the larger picture one thing I find fascinating is how the protagonists are absolutely winning the PR battle. The irony here is that when Snowden or this owner go public the overly secretive government can't or won't reply in an effective manner. That secrecy, so effective when operating in the dark, is suddenly impotent when the light is shined on it. The only attempts at any type of rebuttal have come from Obama and have had little to no effect to change the tidal flow here. So we just get this one sided narrative with a "fresh" new story every 2 or 3 days. It may be disturbing that he can be arrested but is that really news to anyone here? What's the point of a surveillance order if you can't back it up? We lock people up for contempt of court. You have to have a stick if you want folks to comply. Yet here is this story a few days after the main story and just as Lavabit was falling off the global media front page. This keeps the issue alive and hammers the government again. All trademarks of an excellent PR campaign. This narrative is having a withering effect upon those driving these programs as politicians see their constituents slowly turn from understanding of the need for these programs to alarmed by them. That the government has been unable to mount any sort of credible counter story is pretty amazing to me and somewhat a relief. After all, true police states have amazing propaganda machines. This one feels reminiscent of an intern running marketing at a startup!

Spooky23 13y ago
The government has a very effective methodology for protecting things it deems important. Congress got a little feisty about these programs, and for a week we started hearing about "chatter" that was threatening US embassies. We closed embassies and said scary things. Then we bombed some Al Queda in the Arabian Peninsula folks in Yemen. The next day, with much less fanfare, it was reported that it wasn't "chatter" (which implies stuff from the NSA monitoring), but a specific warning from an official in the government of Yemen. These sorts of things are very effective at controlling Congress, especially House members. Nobody wants to be the Congressman who pushed to shutdown programs that thwart terrorists. At the end of the day, what you think doesn't matter. It's what your Congressional representatives think -- and the ability of the administration to manipulate the general public's sense of fear makes it difficult to dismantle these programs.

ds9 13y ago

Here is my hypothesis of the meaning of this story. What the government wanted was to trojan the code (collect passwords because the encryption was based on them), and do so invisibly to the users. Levison prevented this by shutting down the service - that is the real offence. The technicality on which he could be arrested is that he indicated the reason for the shutdown in the message to users on the front page - albeit only by implication. The importance of this, which I think that even many techies may be missing, is that service owners no longer have a choice of what code to run on their own servers. If you run a service that enables secure communications, you can be forced to subvert the code to the detriment of users and effeectively lie about it and deceive the users. You can refuse to participate by quitting the job (unless the 13th Amendment is also being trampled) - but according to the new, defacto US policy, you have to allow the service to continue in trojaned form, otherwise you're subject to prosecution for revealing the government wiretapping to the targets.

anologwintermut 13y ago
Seeing as Lavabit handled encryption and decryption server side, the order could have required them to retain messages after decryption. Or, less insidiously, just required them to retain messages they received prior to encrypting them. In both cases, they wouldn't have forced Lavabit to put in a backdoor, just keep what they had already. (though if they only stored decrypted emails in memory, that distinction is small). Remember, Lavabit voluntarily complied with other court orders, so they likely have the technical means to comply with what the feds want.
- thecodeore 13y ago
  You have no idea what the feds want, and the previous "comply" was probably just turning over the information it had readily available including the raw cipher text which would be useless with out the key I do not believe for a second the NSA was looking simliar information.
- werid 13y ago
  those "other court orders" could have been for accounts that were not encrypted, like the free accounts.

ericxb 13y ago

Related: here's an interview with the owner of an ISP who went through something similar. He was under a gag order for 6 years. The interview also has comments from the Lavabit owner and his lawyer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpRp-D5v5NQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpRp-D5v5NQ

WildUtah 13y ago

If you were going to open an encrypted email service today -- one that would work like Lavabit -- where in the world would you move to before opening it? Obviously, the USA is impossible. I'd suspect that the five Anglosphere nation secret police alliance countries are bad places, too ('Five Eyes': gb, oz, ca, us, nz). That leaves a lot of world to consider. Is Ireland better? It's the only first world English-speaking nation that retains some suspicion and independence toward the Washington Empire, but only because of the ugly history with Britain. Japan and Korea seem like bad choices because they're so close to and dependent on US military operations. Hong Kong and Singapore are subject to police state rules but usually operate extremely liberally; I wonder how it would go in those cities for a private communication service. Germany is making noise about resenting Anglosphere spying, and you could use an affordable Hetzner server. Looks more and more like that resentment is feigned and German secret police are probably learning Stasi tactics from the NSA. What do people think about Iceland or Switzerland. Is there anyplace in the FUSSR to consider? What other country would you nominate? Edit: How about Chile? There's a first world nation that welcomes net startups and has good reason to cooperate very little with the US secret police. After all, the current government is made up of moderate lefties that survived the CIA coup and political murder spree in the 1970s and 1980s.

keefe 13y ago

I hope he is, he knew what he was playing at.