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In Lavabit Appeal, U.S. Doubles Down on Access to Web Crypto Keys

113 points by ghosh 13y ago

marshray 13y ago
Can someone explain how this represents the US attorneys "doubling down"?
igravious 13y ago
“After knocking on his door, FBI special agents witnessed Mr. Levison leave the rear of his apartment, get in his car, and drive away.” Maybe his car was parked out rear? Maybe he needed milk? Maybe the local convenience store wasn't within walking distance? I'm just saying that we needn't jump to any hasty conclusions. This does look mighty suspicious though. Seriously though. Ladar Levison acted contra to his own best interests and in alignment with _all_ of our best interests in thwarting the FBI's attempts at quickly locating and apprehending Edward Snowden. Whatever we may think about Dark Circle it is clear that his heart is in the right place. I wouldn't have the ability and guts to do what he has done and I praise him for it. Yes, he could have designed his previous system better, seems like he's going to try harder next time. We should help.
- fleitz 13y ago
  You're allowed to leave your apartment if people come to your door. Since the officers did not touch him there's no possible way he could be under arrest. It's a free country you can leave and enter your premises as you see fit.
  - igravious 13y ago
    > You're allowed to leave your apartment if people come to your door. The FBI and co. are not regular people. > It's a free country you can leave and enter your premises as you see fit. I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to imply. I mean, if it's such a free country then why did the FBI special agents make note of the fact that they "witnessed Mr. Levison leave the rear of his apartment, get in his car, and drive away" and furthermore why did they include this noted piece of information in the court brief. My understanding of it is that they are insinuating?/stating? that Ladar Levison actively evaded the law. Anyway, it's a minor issue, is it not?
    - malandrew 13y ago
      Did they follow him? Seems like that'd be the logical next step?
      - MagicWishMonkey 13y ago
        They followed him. Ladar freaked out because he had no idea what was going on, he didn't realize the people tailing him were government agents.
- malandrew 13y ago
  The interesting thing here is if there exist conditions under which you can just disappear such that it is impossible to subpeona you. For example, if they had contacted him prior to serving a notice from a judge and he expected to receive a subpeona soon or eventually, what stops him from simply leaving town for a while on a fishing trip or to visit family and conveniently returning when its been long enough that getting the information is of much less use?
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    It was my impression that an incorporated company is required to have a registered point of contact. A sole proprietor wouldn't be subject to that requirement, obviously, but most enterprises are not operated as proprietorships.
    - jlgaddis 13y ago
      Yep, I have a couple of single-member LLCs and I'm required to have a registered agent (basically someone who is normally available during typical business hours at a given location) to accept service.
    - ensignavenger 13y ago
      That point of contact does not have to be available 24/7/365.
      - malandrew 13y ago
        Is that point of contact required to be able to be able to handle unconstitutional law enforcement requirements like NSLs? The only person that needs to "disappear" is the person who can satisfy the requirements of an NSL. i.e. the person with the SSL cert and password.
        thaumasiotes 13y ago
        Disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Every single thing in this comment is speculation. That said, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the following features in the system: - Point of contact must be available during normal business hours. - If the point of contact is not able to handle a particular request from the government, the company is legally responsible for making someone who can available, within a reasonable window of time after the contact point gets the request. - I don't see that the employees can be subject to a legal requirement to appear, or be located anywhere in particular, or be reachable by any means. But the company can. - I'm pretty sure whether or not the law enforcement requirements are putatively unconstitutional makes no difference.
- ghayes 13y ago
  I heard Ladar speak on this topic. Apparently his apartment isn't on the first floor and only has a balcony out back. He just walked out the front door, as he says it.
  - MagicWishMonkey 13y ago
    Not only is his apartment not on the first floor, it's several hundred feet above ground level.
    - Luc 13y ago
      His building doesn't have a back door? You're being very literal minded if you interpret 'leave the rear of his apartment, get in his car, and drive away.' wrongly. I mean, his car wasn't parked on his balcony, was it? It's obvious what is being referred to unless you're picking nits.
      - MagicWishMonkey 13y ago
        The elevator leads to the parking garage, which is where Ladar parks his car. There are a couple of side doors that lead out into a shopping center/dog park, but if you leave that way you can't get to your vehicle easily. The FBI says he drove away, implying he got in his car, which means he took the elevator down to the lobby and walked through the big glass doors into the garage. The most likely just didn't get there in time to catch him in his apartment (or missed him while he was heading down the elevator). I don't understand why they are lying about something as stupid as this, though.
        Luc 13y ago
        > The most likely just didn't get there in time to catch him in his apartment (or missed him while he was heading down the elevator) That seems to fit what's said in the article and what Levison said himself ('I was just leaving my house'). What the FBI said _could_ be read to imply causality between their knocking and him leaving, but perhaps it's due to paraphrasing (and putting a spin on) the agent's report by the US attorney.
- MagicWishMonkey 13y ago
  This story is total, complete, bullshit. I've been to Ladars apartment multiple times, he lives on the 5th or 6th floor of a high rise. His "back door" is a sliding glass door that leads out onto a 5 square foot metal balcony. So, unless Ladar happens to be spiderman, the FBI agent is lying through his teeth.
  - pvnick 13y ago
    It's comments like these and the close-knit community of hackers that keeps me coming back to HN. Everyone seems to know a guy.
leeoniya 13y ago
"That other information not subject to the warrant was encrypted using the same set of keys is irrelevant" Oh, that makes sense...said no one ever. Let's trust our involuntarily-transparent government not to go on a fishing expedition through troves of data that users intentionally chose to encrypt, and then not find justification to get warrants against them for other reasons that can bring the investigation full circle. /s
- rurounijones 13y ago
  It makes perfect sense if you trust the government...which unfortunately the law (as in the written stuff) tends to do.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rakoo 13y ago
  > All other data would be filtered electronically, without reaching any human eye Well, of course, they are to be trusted.
- res0nat0r 13y ago
  Except there is no evidence of any fishing happening in this case.
  - leeoniya 13y ago
    let's say he gave them the SSL keys. how would anyone ever prove afterwards what they did with the decrypted info? evidence of this type of official misconduct doesn't exist except through leaks which (i imagine) as far as the law is concerned is pretty far from admissible evidence.
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      The unrelated evidence in this case (from other users) just can't be used in court, they need probable cause. In this case there is no probable cause to arrest Joe Blow for a crime, this was all about getting to Snowden.
frank_boyd 13y ago
TL;DR > A U.S. email provider can promise its users all the security and privacy it wants; it still has to do whatever it takes to give the government access.
- MagicWishMonkey 13y ago
  Not necessarily, it is not at all clear that the government has the authority to demand a private business surrender SSL keys. Such an could very well be in violation of the 4th amendment. You are correct, in that the government does have the authority to demand information on a specific person, but due to how Lavabit was designed that information was encrypted in such a way that only Edward Snowden could provide the password for decryption. In most systems data is stored in plain text (or encrypted with a cipher key known by the system administrator), so surrendering data in readable form is not an issue.
res0nat0r 13y ago
At least Poulsen is sticking with the facts: > A U.S. email provider can promise its users all the security and privacy it wants; it still has to do whatever it takes to give the government access. Correct. Again: Just because Lavabit designed its security in a shitty manner to make it easier for end users, doesn't mean he can somehow wave his hands and claim "but but but but, I've designed this system such that you will be able to also read other peoples emails whom you've not subpoenaed. That is against my mission statement!". Sorry bud.
- Amadou 13y ago
  doesn't mean he can somehow wave his hands and claim "but but but but, I've designed this system such that you will be able to also read other peoples emails whom you've not subpoenaed. That is against my mission statement!". Sure it does. If the police want to do something that impacts a very large number of innocent bystanders they need to have a higher level of accountability than if they just want to target one specific individual. For example it is unreasonable to search every house in a neighborhood in order to arrest one guy who owns a house there.
  - XorNot 13y ago
    Yeah except that's not how it works. The police/law enforcement/courts can simply get a warrant which says they're allowed to look at exactly 1 guys email, and you are to provide decryption keys. You don't get to play "well I don't trust the government so I'm not going to let you" against the courts if the relevant parties promise they're not going to look at anything else - since amongst other things that would actually be breaking the law, and whatever they get would be inadmissible under various umbrellas - they certainly couldn't build a case off of it.
    - amirmc 13y ago
      You might want to look into parallel construction. "Parallel construction is a police process of building a parallel - or separate - evidentiary basis for a criminal investigation which otherwise would rely upon evidence or tips received either from a confidential source or that might fall under the category of fruit of the poisonous tree. By building a separate evidentiary basis for an investigation, such as corroborating evidence using other resources or finding other valid reasons to investigate, prosecutors are able to avoid disclosing confidential or otherwise unusable evidence." (From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction)
Fuxy 13y ago
“After knocking on his door, FBI special agents witnessed Mr. Levison leave the rear of his apartment, get in his car, and drive away.” What leaving the rear of the apartment is against the law after being visited by the FBI? Anybody else think the FBI is trying to paint an image of Ladar Levison as the typical movie bad guy here? I get where the government is coming from he went a little overboard resisting them but getting the SSL certificate for the entire website for 1 guy is unacceptable and if they don't agree they don't understand the internet.
belorn 13y ago
If it becomes the official policy in U.S. that companies must provide the government with keys, passwords, and broad proprietary information related to system design, this will have an effect on the IT industry. Its the key escrow thing all over again. Companies has a few option: Implement perfect forward security and see government create laws to counter it. They can also move the data centers to countries without key escrow laws.
- dingaling 13y ago
  They can also implement discrete per-customer cryptographic solutions, so that if they receive a warrant for the data and traffic relating to Customer-X then they don't have to compromise all their other customers. It'll cost more to set-up and run, but the benefit is that your business won't go down the drain when the warrant arrives.
  - belorn 13y ago
    Thats a set-up that not even the military deploys, or banks for that matter. Its arguable also in the same league of PFS, as the government could easy just issue general warrants or alternative create laws that does the same.
    - ds9 13y ago
      You probably intended only a descriptive term, but fittingly the Americans' opposition to what was called the "general warrant" was precisely what led to the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution. [1] But you are correct that this is the likely outcome, now that the rule of law is essentially dead in the US. 1. See, e.g., http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fourth+Amendment http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fourth+Amendme..., "The Framers drafted the Fourth Amendment in response to their colonial experience with British officials, whose discretion in collecting revenues for the Crown often went unchecked. Upon a mere suspicion held by British tax collectors or their informants, colonial magistrates were compelled to issue general warrants, which permitted blanket door-to-door searches of entire neighborhoods without limitation as to person or place. The law did not require magistrates to question British officials regarding the source of their suspicion or to make other credibility determinations. "The writ of assistance was a particularly loathsome form of general warrant. The name of this writ derived from the power of British authorities to enlist local peace officers and colonial residents who might "assist" in executing a particular search."
tehwalrus 13y ago
Well, they've played their cards, let's see which way the judge comes down.
betterunix 13y ago
"Marketing a business as 'secure' does not give one license to ignore a District Court of the United States" Which is why we should always prefer technical approaches to resisting surveillance. Promising that you will not compromise user privacy is pretty weak.
pixelcort 13y ago
I somewhat wish this case was a simple secret order and immediate subsequent self shutdown of a service, to test in court whether shutting down a service would be legal when presented with such an order.

113 points by ghosh 13y ago

Can someone explain how this represents the US attorneys "doubling down"?

“After knocking on his door, FBI special agents witnessed Mr. Levison leave the rear of his apartment, get in his car, and drive away.” Maybe his car was parked out rear? Maybe he needed milk? Maybe the local convenience store wasn't within walking distance? I'm just saying that we needn't jump to any hasty conclusions. This does look mighty suspicious though. Seriously though. Ladar Levison acted contra to his own best interests and in alignment with _all_ of our best interests in thwarting the FBI's attempts at quickly locating and apprehending Edward Snowden. Whatever we may think about Dark Circle it is clear that his heart is in the right place. I wouldn't have the ability and guts to do what he has done and I praise him for it. Yes, he could have designed his previous system better, seems like he's going to try harder next time. We should help.

fleitz 13y ago
You're allowed to leave your apartment if people come to your door. Since the officers did not touch him there's no possible way he could be under arrest. It's a free country you can leave and enter your premises as you see fit.
- igravious 13y ago
  > You're allowed to leave your apartment if people come to your door. The FBI and co. are not regular people. > It's a free country you can leave and enter your premises as you see fit. I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to imply. I mean, if it's such a free country then why did the FBI special agents make note of the fact that they "witnessed Mr. Levison leave the rear of his apartment, get in his car, and drive away" and furthermore why did they include this noted piece of information in the court brief. My understanding of it is that they are insinuating?/stating? that Ladar Levison actively evaded the law. Anyway, it's a minor issue, is it not?
  - malandrew 13y ago
    Did they follow him? Seems like that'd be the logical next step?
    - MagicWishMonkey 13y ago
      They followed him. Ladar freaked out because he had no idea what was going on, he didn't realize the people tailing him were government agents.
malandrew 13y ago
The interesting thing here is if there exist conditions under which you can just disappear such that it is impossible to subpeona you. For example, if they had contacted him prior to serving a notice from a judge and he expected to receive a subpeona soon or eventually, what stops him from simply leaving town for a while on a fishing trip or to visit family and conveniently returning when its been long enough that getting the information is of much less use?
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  It was my impression that an incorporated company is required to have a registered point of contact. A sole proprietor wouldn't be subject to that requirement, obviously, but most enterprises are not operated as proprietorships.
  - jlgaddis 13y ago
    Yep, I have a couple of single-member LLCs and I'm required to have a registered agent (basically someone who is normally available during typical business hours at a given location) to accept service.
  - ensignavenger 13y ago
    That point of contact does not have to be available 24/7/365.
    - malandrew 13y ago
      Is that point of contact required to be able to be able to handle unconstitutional law enforcement requirements like NSLs? The only person that needs to "disappear" is the person who can satisfy the requirements of an NSL. i.e. the person with the SSL cert and password.
      - thaumasiotes 13y ago
        Disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Every single thing in this comment is speculation. That said, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the following features in the system: - Point of contact must be available during normal business hours. - If the point of contact is not able to handle a particular request from the government, the company is legally responsible for making someone who can available, within a reasonable window of time after the contact point gets the request. - I don't see that the employees can be subject to a legal requirement to appear, or be located anywhere in particular, or be reachable by any means. But the company can. - I'm pretty sure whether or not the law enforcement requirements are putatively unconstitutional makes no difference.
ghayes 13y ago
I heard Ladar speak on this topic. Apparently his apartment isn't on the first floor and only has a balcony out back. He just walked out the front door, as he says it.
- MagicWishMonkey 13y ago
  Not only is his apartment not on the first floor, it's several hundred feet above ground level.
  - Luc 13y ago
    His building doesn't have a back door? You're being very literal minded if you interpret 'leave the rear of his apartment, get in his car, and drive away.' wrongly. I mean, his car wasn't parked on his balcony, was it? It's obvious what is being referred to unless you're picking nits.
    - MagicWishMonkey 13y ago
      The elevator leads to the parking garage, which is where Ladar parks his car. There are a couple of side doors that lead out into a shopping center/dog park, but if you leave that way you can't get to your vehicle easily. The FBI says he drove away, implying he got in his car, which means he took the elevator down to the lobby and walked through the big glass doors into the garage. The most likely just didn't get there in time to catch him in his apartment (or missed him while he was heading down the elevator). I don't understand why they are lying about something as stupid as this, though.
      - Luc 13y ago
        > The most likely just didn't get there in time to catch him in his apartment (or missed him while he was heading down the elevator) That seems to fit what's said in the article and what Levison said himself ('I was just leaving my house'). What the FBI said _could_ be read to imply causality between their knocking and him leaving, but perhaps it's due to paraphrasing (and putting a spin on) the agent's report by the US attorney.
MagicWishMonkey 13y ago
This story is total, complete, bullshit. I've been to Ladars apartment multiple times, he lives on the 5th or 6th floor of a high rise. His "back door" is a sliding glass door that leads out onto a 5 square foot metal balcony. So, unless Ladar happens to be spiderman, the FBI agent is lying through his teeth.
- pvnick 13y ago
  It's comments like these and the close-knit community of hackers that keeps me coming back to HN. Everyone seems to know a guy.

leeoniya 13y ago

"That other information not subject to the warrant was encrypted using the same set of keys is irrelevant" Oh, that makes sense...said no one ever. Let's trust our involuntarily-transparent government not to go on a fishing expedition through troves of data that users intentionally chose to encrypt, and then not find justification to get warrants against them for other reasons that can bring the investigation full circle. /s

rurounijones 13y ago
It makes perfect sense if you trust the government...which unfortunately the law (as in the written stuff) tends to do.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rakoo 13y ago
> All other data would be filtered electronically, without reaching any human eye Well, of course, they are to be trusted.
res0nat0r 13y ago
Except there is no evidence of any fishing happening in this case.
- leeoniya 13y ago
  let's say he gave them the SSL keys. how would anyone ever prove afterwards what they did with the decrypted info? evidence of this type of official misconduct doesn't exist except through leaks which (i imagine) as far as the law is concerned is pretty far from admissible evidence.
  - res0nat0r 13y ago
    The unrelated evidence in this case (from other users) just can't be used in court, they need probable cause. In this case there is no probable cause to arrest Joe Blow for a crime, this was all about getting to Snowden.

frank_boyd 13y ago

TL;DR > A U.S. email provider can promise its users all the security and privacy it wants; it still has to do whatever it takes to give the government access.

MagicWishMonkey 13y ago
Not necessarily, it is not at all clear that the government has the authority to demand a private business surrender SSL keys. Such an could very well be in violation of the 4th amendment. You are correct, in that the government does have the authority to demand information on a specific person, but due to how Lavabit was designed that information was encrypted in such a way that only Edward Snowden could provide the password for decryption. In most systems data is stored in plain text (or encrypted with a cipher key known by the system administrator), so surrendering data in readable form is not an issue.

res0nat0r 13y ago

At least Poulsen is sticking with the facts: > A U.S. email provider can promise its users all the security and privacy it wants; it still has to do whatever it takes to give the government access. Correct. Again: Just because Lavabit designed its security in a shitty manner to make it easier for end users, doesn't mean he can somehow wave his hands and claim "but but but but, I've designed this system such that you will be able to also read other peoples emails whom you've not subpoenaed. That is against my mission statement!". Sorry bud.

Amadou 13y ago
doesn't mean he can somehow wave his hands and claim "but but but but, I've designed this system such that you will be able to also read other peoples emails whom you've not subpoenaed. That is against my mission statement!". Sure it does. If the police want to do something that impacts a very large number of innocent bystanders they need to have a higher level of accountability than if they just want to target one specific individual. For example it is unreasonable to search every house in a neighborhood in order to arrest one guy who owns a house there.
- XorNot 13y ago
  Yeah except that's not how it works. The police/law enforcement/courts can simply get a warrant which says they're allowed to look at exactly 1 guys email, and you are to provide decryption keys. You don't get to play "well I don't trust the government so I'm not going to let you" against the courts if the relevant parties promise they're not going to look at anything else - since amongst other things that would actually be breaking the law, and whatever they get would be inadmissible under various umbrellas - they certainly couldn't build a case off of it.
  - amirmc 13y ago
    You might want to look into parallel construction. "Parallel construction is a police process of building a parallel - or separate - evidentiary basis for a criminal investigation which otherwise would rely upon evidence or tips received either from a confidential source or that might fall under the category of fruit of the poisonous tree. By building a separate evidentiary basis for an investigation, such as corroborating evidence using other resources or finding other valid reasons to investigate, prosecutors are able to avoid disclosing confidential or otherwise unusable evidence." (From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction)

Fuxy 13y ago

“After knocking on his door, FBI special agents witnessed Mr. Levison leave the rear of his apartment, get in his car, and drive away.” What leaving the rear of the apartment is against the law after being visited by the FBI? Anybody else think the FBI is trying to paint an image of Ladar Levison as the typical movie bad guy here? I get where the government is coming from he went a little overboard resisting them but getting the SSL certificate for the entire website for 1 guy is unacceptable and if they don't agree they don't understand the internet.

belorn 13y ago

If it becomes the official policy in U.S. that companies must provide the government with keys, passwords, and broad proprietary information related to system design, this will have an effect on the IT industry. Its the key escrow thing all over again. Companies has a few option: Implement perfect forward security and see government create laws to counter it. They can also move the data centers to countries without key escrow laws.

dingaling 13y ago
They can also implement discrete per-customer cryptographic solutions, so that if they receive a warrant for the data and traffic relating to Customer-X then they don't have to compromise all their other customers. It'll cost more to set-up and run, but the benefit is that your business won't go down the drain when the warrant arrives.
- belorn 13y ago
  Thats a set-up that not even the military deploys, or banks for that matter. Its arguable also in the same league of PFS, as the government could easy just issue general warrants or alternative create laws that does the same.
  - ds9 13y ago
    You probably intended only a descriptive term, but fittingly the Americans' opposition to what was called the "general warrant" was precisely what led to the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution. [1] But you are correct that this is the likely outcome, now that the rule of law is essentially dead in the US. 1. See, e.g., http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fourth+Amendment http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fourth+Amendme..., "The Framers drafted the Fourth Amendment in response to their colonial experience with British officials, whose discretion in collecting revenues for the Crown often went unchecked. Upon a mere suspicion held by British tax collectors or their informants, colonial magistrates were compelled to issue general warrants, which permitted blanket door-to-door searches of entire neighborhoods without limitation as to person or place. The law did not require magistrates to question British officials regarding the source of their suspicion or to make other credibility determinations. "The writ of assistance was a particularly loathsome form of general warrant. The name of this writ derived from the power of British authorities to enlist local peace officers and colonial residents who might "assist" in executing a particular search."

tehwalrus 13y ago

Well, they've played their cards, let's see which way the judge comes down.

betterunix 13y ago

"Marketing a business as 'secure' does not give one license to ignore a District Court of the United States" Which is why we should always prefer technical approaches to resisting surveillance. Promising that you will not compromise user privacy is pretty weak.

pixelcort 13y ago

I somewhat wish this case was a simple secret order and immediate subsequent self shutdown of a service, to test in court whether shutting down a service would be legal when presented with such an order.