Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lavabit abruptly shuts down

lavabit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 671 posts

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#211

Post by deftnerd »

sneak wrote: post #187
dkulchenko wrote: post #138

This is infuriating, and the worst part is that a clear solution isn't in sight. Sure, we can fight this in the courts, and a few secret programs might get shut down, but operations will just continue under a different name. We can encrypt our data, move our services and data offshore, but that just paints a big target on our heads - doesn't actually address the fundamental issue. This is supposed to be a democracy,…

The only nonviolent solution I've found is to move away and stop paying taxes to the US war machine. Don't use or support services that pay US taxes, either. It's what I did. PS: It is very, very, very difficult, because most of the people you care about will not move with you.

My family and I have started this process already and expect to be in Central America within the year.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#212

Post by guelo »

joelrunyon wrote: post #166

> I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Anyone know what happens if he just says "F it" and writes a massive blog post on what exactly happened or what exactly they said to him?

He'd probably go to jail immediately and then spend years working the case through the courts in the hopes of getting a Supreme Court decision striking the law down as unconstitutional.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#214

Post by rayiner »

dkulchenko wrote: post #138

This is infuriating, and the worst part is that a clear solution isn't in sight. Sure, we can fight this in the courts, and a few secret programs might get shut down, but operations will just continue under a different name. We can encrypt our data, move our services and data offshore, but that just paints a big target on our heads - doesn't actually address the fundamental issue. This is supposed to be a democracy,…

The democratic solution is to get people to care about your issue. If the anti-abortionists can do it, so can privacy advocates.

Also, we have no idea whether Lavabit's operator's real situation is (though I certainly fault the government for the ridiculous NSL scheme that prevents him from spilling the beans). Is he objecting to installing a PRISM-style scheme, or to legitimate wiretaps?

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#215

Post by Karunamon »

deftnerd wrote: post #203
meritt wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving services off USA-based companies is like using two bicycle locks instead of one. A determined government is still going to get your data, they just need to spend a bit more time. Focus instead on encryption.

I saw a frustrating article the other day on a mainstream news site that was saying that the economic damage to the US for the Snoden leaks was in the tens of billions of dollars because of all the non US business that will be leaving US based cloud providers. That's infuriating. It's the same as having an insecure system and then charging a hacker millions of dollars in restitution to re-architect the system to do i…

Infuriating? It's awesome (if you extend it out further). Pocketbook damage is the only thing that governments and mega-corps understand.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#216

Post by sneak »

casca wrote: post #57
computer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be resilient to interception of mail going to and coming from lavabit however, since email is essentially a plaintext public protocol.

This is somewhat true. RFC3207[1] describes opportunistic TLS encryption for SMTP communications. Our postfix deployment uses this and a fair amount of our email is sent over TLS-encrypted SMTP. Of course, an MITM attack could hide the STARTTLS option and there are questions around the strength of the CA cert infrastructure, but SMTP is not just plaintext. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3207

The problem is that all of the people you correspond with use gmail, which participates in PRISM. No amount of transport encryption or storage encryption on your own end will stop Google from sharing that data with US authorities.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#217

Post by rayiner »

deftnerd wrote: post #211
sneak wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only nonviolent solution I've found is to move away and stop paying taxes to the US war machine. Don't use or support services that pay US taxes, either. It's what I did. PS: It is very, very, very difficult, because most of the people you care about will not move with you.

My family and I have started this process already and expect to be in Central America within the year.

Because the Central American governments so wonderfully respect human rights.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#218

Post by nakedrobot2 »

joelrunyon wrote: post #166

> I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Anyone know what happens if he just says "F it" and writes a massive blog post on what exactly happened or what exactly they said to him?

He goes to prison.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#219

Post by mortenjorck »

joelrunyon wrote: post #166

> I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Anyone know what happens if he just says "F it" and writes a massive blog post on what exactly happened or what exactly they said to him?

He moves (or rather has already moved) to Russia.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#220

Post by Dylan16807 »

toyg wrote: post #172
unethical_ban wrote: post #22

I 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…

Old European elites shared a common culture that went beyond borders, at times perversely so (e.g. the whole Geneva Convention mindset where war is all a big game in need of more gentlemanly rules). They respected each other more than they did their fellow countrymen from lower classes. It's the same today: you'd never see a Saudi billionaire droned, even if we knew he'd been "the real Osama" all along. Snowden is a…

Iterated prisoner's dilemma isn't exactly a 'perverse' way of looking at war. Taking the high road helps you more than it hurts you. And remember that a country taken with minimal casualties is going to be much less rebellious.

Killing is not the goal of war.

Post reply on HN