Time to donate to the EFF. They haven't been branded as a terrorist charity yet, AFAIK...
The head of the NSA branded them as "the next terrorists".
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/06/cyberscare_ex_nsa_chief_call...
Lavabit abruptly shuts down
21–30 of 671 posts
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#22I watched Casablanca the other night.
SPOILERS
I thought about how the Gestapo had Lazlow in their midst, at the same TABLE as them, and yet didn't do anything immediately other than deny him further travel. Of course, it's a movie, but it was an interesting thought. Nowadays, if Snowden were known to be hiding in a foreigner's Moroccan cafe, we'ds drone half the building.
Also, I noticed the pride and the wonder that America inspired in the workers and patrons of Rick's. It was a symbol of freedom and opportunity. I wonder how many people see it that way now.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#23I just signed up three days ago, and was exchanging mail with one of their reps about opening a couple more accounts with them. I went to log in last night and noticed that the service was down, which I thought was a little odd (since everything was down at once). I'm going to have to read this again later when I get a chance but for now, wow. I respect their decision but I'll bet the timing sure was bad for a lot of people (especially those coming to Lavabit specifically to escape what's going on here).
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#24I'm in the process of moving any Saas offerings I use off USA-affiliated companies, but it's actually more difficult than I first thought. I believe there might even be a very profitable market in simply duplicating the functionality of Saas offerings at a higher price with security/privacy guarantees in Germany/HK/etc. Might be the next hot business to be in? You'd be surprised as to the number of people seeking alternatives at this point.
EDIT: Relevant XKCD for people calling for technical solutions to the problem: http://xkcd.com/538/
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#25Crap, I had just recently migrated all of my accounts to my new Lavabit address, paid for a year of service, etc. Although I've seen some mentioned, what recommendations does HN have for a new e-mail service? Preferably something stable and also respecting of a user's privacy. Or perhaps you can only have 1 of the aforementioned attributes.
I just lost access to my primary email account.
Do what I do!
I have my own domain name, currently hosting with Google Apps. If I get the motivation to move to another host like myself, I can do it without changing contact information.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#26Seems like it would make sense for users to demand that any US based service includes a warrant canary, just like rsync.net's implementation. A global canary + separate canaries for individual accounts would also make sense.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#27For the unfamiliar: Lavabit was a webmail service, that (claimed to) encrypt emails in such a way that they literally did not have access to the content stored on their own servers. The linked email would lend some credence to those claims. It was originally designed in contrast to gmail scanning your email for targeted advertising, but my imperfect memory says that their system should also have been resilient to "we…
Well, he may not have been able to hand over the old data, but he may have been asked to include an exploit for all mail going forward. That could have been as simple as the authorities inserting some middleware.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#28For the unfamiliar: Lavabit was a webmail service, that (claimed to) encrypt emails in such a way that they literally did not have access to the content stored on their own servers. The linked email would lend some credence to those claims. It was originally designed in contrast to gmail scanning your email for targeted advertising, but my imperfect memory says that their system should also have been resilient to "we…
And this reads as if someone was trying to force him to install means to spy on his users, and it wouldn't be surprising if the aim was to spy on Snowden directly (if he really used this service).
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#29Crap, I had just recently migrated all of my accounts to my new Lavabit address, paid for a year of service, etc. Although I've seen some mentioned, what recommendations does HN have for a new e-mail service? Preferably something stable and also respecting of a user's privacy. Or perhaps you can only have 1 of the aforementioned attributes.
I just lost access to my primary email account.
That's a nightmare. However, I do feel strongly that lavabit made the only right choice. The US government is entirely to blame.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#30I watched Casablanca the other night. SPOILERS I thought about how the Gestapo had Lazlow in their midst, at the same TABLE as them, and yet didn't do anything immediately other than deny him further travel. Of course, it's a movie, but it was an interesting thought. Nowadays, if Snowden were known to be hiding in a foreigner's Moroccan cafe, we'ds drone half the building. Also, I noticed the pride and the wonder tha…
It's only the people with the least amount of power, the least pull with authorities, who get droned.