5 ms·

Newly Unsealed Redacted Lavabit Case Filings

34 points by thinkcomp 12y ago

chippy 12y ago
These documents seem to back up the story that Levison, whilst obeying in past orders, did so begrudgingly. "..in light of Lavabit LLC's history of failing to abide by court orders...the US needed order to compel before they complied with legal process. In fact they have incurred fines of $10,000...associated with its failure to comply with those court orders." edited - page 14
- tptacek 12y ago
  They'd have to, right? The narrative about Levison resisting court orders is established in a detailed opinion from the 4th Circuit, written by a judge who was confirmed unanimously by the Senate in 2008.
thinkcomp 12y ago
It's always fun reading court documents where the censors go totally overboard. Here, there are a few spots where that happens, such as where they black out the publicly available telephone and fax numbers for the various attorneys. In other spots (page 55) the attorney names are blacked out, but I'm pretty sure they're visible on the very next page (page 56).
tptacek 12y ago
Worth noting the date at which these filings commence --- early August 2013, more than month after the initial court order was generated for Snowden's account on Lavabit. I'd really like to see the court orders that preceded this one. According to the timeline in the Appeals Court ruling on Levison's contempt charge, the demand for SSL/TLS encryption keys followed a month of Levison more or less baiting the FBI. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7774158#up_7774823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7774158#up_7774823
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Would you speculate on Levison's motive in your sequence of events? It's a solid analysis, but why would Levison do all of that? Your analysis changed my view about Levison. I think people mostly equate Levison's actions to Snowden's without really thinking about the differences. Thought experiment: what if a mole was selling US secrets to other countries? If Levison would respond in the same fashion as in this Snowden case, then that obviously would be detrimental to the US's interests. But would he? Here's where it gets tricky. It's my understanding that Levison complied with past US orders. So that begs the question: why did Levison choose that moment to be rebellious? Was he trying to protect Snowden? (Did anyone even know who Snowden was or what he did at that point? My memory is hazy on the timeline.) It's certainly a convenient excuse to say that Levison was protecting Snowden. But if it's true, how would you feel about his actions in light of that fact? If Levison wasn't protecting Snowden, then why did he choose that particular hill to die on, and not any of the past compliance orders? It seems like Levison had some knowledge that prompted him to act the way he did. But if this all happened before Snowden became public knowledge, then what knowledge could have possibly converted him from someone who obediently follows government requests into someone who would "bait the FBI"? Beyond all of that, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on whether there's any possible excuse for Levison's actions which you personally would find redeeming.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    I don't know how to answer this, but if you want a handy rule of thumb for how I think about controversies in tech: I generally favor the most boring of all speculations. Snowden isn't an agent of the FSB. The NSA isn't a secret ploy to enforce the Comics Code Authority. Levison was simply opportunistic and inept. The Truecrypt developers got bored and gave up. NIST p-224 isn't a good curve but it isn't a backdoor. And so on.
    - jnbiche 12y ago
      >Levison was simply opportunistic and inept Actually, by far the simplest explanation in this case is that Levison supported Snowden's actions and wanted to back him up. I mean, he sacrificed his company -- his baby -- for this case, even though he had complied with multiple prior government requests (usually relating to child porn, from what I recall). Clearly, Levinson went through a period of fear and doubt, but the only consistency was his refusal to give up keys that would reveal Snowden's communications. Can you explain why you are convinced it's opportunism and not idealism? Because unless you know something we don't, Occam's Razor in this case says that Levison was simply being a Snowden supporter, to the point of sacrificing his livelihood. In my book, that makes him a patriot. Sillysaurus: yes, he knew the court order was for Snowden, since it specifically mentioned him by name. Also, I believe that an edsnowden@lavabit address (or something similar) was on GPG keyservers everywhere. So it wasn't hard to guess. And in fact, that address was soon revealed to be Snowden's in a public document from his lawyer sent by Wikileaks (accidentally).
belovedeagle 12y ago
I find the oral argument on pdf pages 61ff. very intriguing... Under the assumption that the case is about Snowden (which is not known, really, 100%), it seems like the gov't lawyers were worried about revealing that the gov't is looking into "coconspirators". The only reason they'd want to hide that is not to tip off those hypothetical coconspirators, who would necessarily work for NSA/other intelligence org, or else would be journalists whose identities we're already familiar with. In the latter case, US seems to feel some shame in targeting journalists, or at least understands that the general public would not be pleased to hear that the gov't is targeting journalists in particular, especially with charges of espionage or what-have-you. But in the former case, we would be looking at a very big-brother-esque instance of the gov't being paranoid that members of the "inner circle" don't have the gov't's perceived best interests at heart, which is a legitimate concern, but also we have the gov't watching those inner circle members most closely, which is a major theme of 1984, e.g. On the same note, there is something of an acute irony, or perhaps subconscious characterization of the gov't viewpoint, in the argument on pdf page 64: "because it puts those individuals ['other individuals who may now be known or unknown to the government'] on notice[—]other people who may not be the specific user of the account[—]that they should take steps because they may be within the scope of the governement's investigation". The irony here is that the government acts like it believes that everyone is "within the scope of [...] investigation", and it would be quite detrimental to the gov't's mass surveillance efforts if "other people" become aware that they should "take steps" to mitigate surveillance. That being said, I'm not 100% confident that Snowden is the target of the Lavabit investigation, and I'm wondering if anyone is aware of any alternative speculation?

34 points by thinkcomp 12y ago

These documents seem to back up the story that Levison, whilst obeying in past orders, did so begrudgingly. "..in light of Lavabit LLC's history of failing to abide by court orders...the US needed order to compel before they complied with legal process. In fact they have incurred fines of $10,000...associated with its failure to comply with those court orders." edited - page 14

tptacek 12y ago
They'd have to, right? The narrative about Levison resisting court orders is established in a detailed opinion from the 4th Circuit, written by a judge who was confirmed unanimously by the Senate in 2008.

thinkcomp 12y ago

It's always fun reading court documents where the censors go totally overboard. Here, there are a few spots where that happens, such as where they black out the publicly available telephone and fax numbers for the various attorneys. In other spots (page 55) the attorney names are blacked out, but I'm pretty sure they're visible on the very next page (page 56).

tptacek 12y ago

Worth noting the date at which these filings commence --- early August 2013, more than month after the initial court order was generated for Snowden's account on Lavabit. I'd really like to see the court orders that preceded this one. According to the timeline in the Appeals Court ruling on Levison's contempt charge, the demand for SSL/TLS encryption keys followed a month of Levison more or less baiting the FBI. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7774158#up_7774823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7774158#up_7774823

sillysaurus3 12y ago
Would you speculate on Levison's motive in your sequence of events? It's a solid analysis, but why would Levison do all of that? Your analysis changed my view about Levison. I think people mostly equate Levison's actions to Snowden's without really thinking about the differences. Thought experiment: what if a mole was selling US secrets to other countries? If Levison would respond in the same fashion as in this Snowden case, then that obviously would be detrimental to the US's interests. But would he? Here's where it gets tricky. It's my understanding that Levison complied with past US orders. So that begs the question: why did Levison choose that moment to be rebellious? Was he trying to protect Snowden? (Did anyone even know who Snowden was or what he did at that point? My memory is hazy on the timeline.) It's certainly a convenient excuse to say that Levison was protecting Snowden. But if it's true, how would you feel about his actions in light of that fact? If Levison wasn't protecting Snowden, then why did he choose that particular hill to die on, and not any of the past compliance orders? It seems like Levison had some knowledge that prompted him to act the way he did. But if this all happened before Snowden became public knowledge, then what knowledge could have possibly converted him from someone who obediently follows government requests into someone who would "bait the FBI"? Beyond all of that, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on whether there's any possible excuse for Levison's actions which you personally would find redeeming.
- tptacek 12y ago
  I don't know how to answer this, but if you want a handy rule of thumb for how I think about controversies in tech: I generally favor the most boring of all speculations. Snowden isn't an agent of the FSB. The NSA isn't a secret ploy to enforce the Comics Code Authority. Levison was simply opportunistic and inept. The Truecrypt developers got bored and gave up. NIST p-224 isn't a good curve but it isn't a backdoor. And so on.
  - jnbiche 12y ago
    >Levison was simply opportunistic and inept Actually, by far the simplest explanation in this case is that Levison supported Snowden's actions and wanted to back him up. I mean, he sacrificed his company -- his baby -- for this case, even though he had complied with multiple prior government requests (usually relating to child porn, from what I recall). Clearly, Levinson went through a period of fear and doubt, but the only consistency was his refusal to give up keys that would reveal Snowden's communications. Can you explain why you are convinced it's opportunism and not idealism? Because unless you know something we don't, Occam's Razor in this case says that Levison was simply being a Snowden supporter, to the point of sacrificing his livelihood. In my book, that makes him a patriot. Sillysaurus: yes, he knew the court order was for Snowden, since it specifically mentioned him by name. Also, I believe that an edsnowden@lavabit address (or something similar) was on GPG keyservers everywhere. So it wasn't hard to guess. And in fact, that address was soon revealed to be Snowden's in a public document from his lawyer sent by Wikileaks (accidentally).

belovedeagle 12y ago

I find the oral argument on pdf pages 61ff. very intriguing... Under the assumption that the case is about Snowden (which is not known, really, 100%), it seems like the gov't lawyers were worried about revealing that the gov't is looking into "coconspirators". The only reason they'd want to hide that is not to tip off those hypothetical coconspirators, who would necessarily work for NSA/other intelligence org, or else would be journalists whose identities we're already familiar with. In the latter case, US seems to feel some shame in targeting journalists, or at least understands that the general public would not be pleased to hear that the gov't is targeting journalists in particular, especially with charges of espionage or what-have-you. But in the former case, we would be looking at a very big-brother-esque instance of the gov't being paranoid that members of the "inner circle" don't have the gov't's perceived best interests at heart, which is a legitimate concern, but also we have the gov't watching those inner circle members most closely, which is a major theme of 1984, e.g. On the same note, there is something of an acute irony, or perhaps subconscious characterization of the gov't viewpoint, in the argument on pdf page 64: "because it puts those individuals ['other individuals who may now be known or unknown to the government'] on notice[—]other people who may not be the specific user of the account[—]that they should take steps because they may be within the scope of the governement's investigation". The irony here is that the government acts like it believes that everyone is "within the scope of [...] investigation", and it would be quite detrimental to the gov't's mass surveillance efforts if "other people" become aware that they should "take steps" to mitigate surveillance. That being said, I'm not 100% confident that Snowden is the target of the Lavabit investigation, and I'm wondering if anyone is aware of any alternative speculation?