Are there any countries, anywhere, where a person can store data outside the reach of the US government's illegal overreach? Any countries friendly to the US are right out. They can tap the lines, but there are ways around that. I just want to be able to park data where some twit with a piece of paper that says "NSA" on it can't get it retrieved or deleted. Any suggestions?
Lavabit abruptly shuts down
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Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#72For 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
#73Time 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...
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#74Time to donate to the EFF. They haven't been branded as a terrorist charity yet, AFAIK...
Don't give ideas. Too bad that he does not have donations page. I would gladly donate. Also - respect for the decision he made. If he kickstarts a campaign for restoring the service I will be there too.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#75Sounds like any country willing to guarantee a snoop free environment could have a lot of servers hosted there. I'm thinking the Caymen islands of data. Set up a shell company and a shell server in the Caymens to protect your money and your customers.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think canaries are effective. You can't get around a court order just by mental gymnastics, they'll hold you in contempt. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I suspect that they'd simply order you to keep updating the canary.
I'm also unsure of their proven effectiveness, but how could they hold you in contempt for _not_ taking an action?
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#77Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd love to believe that the authorities in Germany are not also tapping lines like France or the UK. Do we have any proof that is the case? I agree this has made me think twice about hosting in the us, but also about crossing national boundaries full stop without encrypting traffic.
If you're German, would you prefer to be surveilled by the German government or by both the US and German governments? If you're in the US it seems kinda pointless to try to move to overseas hosting; the NSA will probably just focus on the client side.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/bild-908609-515222...
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
The head of the NSA branded them as "the next terrorists". http://www.salon.com/2013/08/06/cyberscare_ex_nsa_chief_call...
> “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years” Now that's a generalization if I ever heard one.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#80For 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.