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Lavabit abruptly shuts down

lavabit.com

351–360 of 671 posts

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#351

So, secret court case, started by a secret spy service gets an email service shut down. We know next to nothing, except the service went down, with out an open honest explanation. The owner is left with leaving a cryptic-ish message to their users. So, I ask again: at what point is it reasonable to use words like fascist, police state, etc? What is a reasonable tipping point?

I used a similar term, with the word "becoming" first about a month ago. Maybe we should start running regular polls. It's not a cliff you're going to fall off, it's more like slowly sinking into a pool of it.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the Central American governments so wonderfully respect human rights.

I know you'd probably prefer people stay in the US, but would you like to make a recommendation for our viewers at home looking to get away?

Where are you going to go? People playing up third world countries don't know shit. The day-to-day corruption in nearly every such country is so bad that after awhile you'd rather have someone reading your e-mail but otherwise leaving you alone. And let me tell you from first hand experience--it is soul sucking to live in a country like that where you're constantly surrounded by people living on the edge of subsistence (or if you aren't you've segregated yourself into 1%-er bubbles, which is its own kind of bad).

Look at the BRIC countries, which are supposedly on an upward trajectory. Russia, India, and China are out off the bat. Russia and China do not have functioning democracies, and while India does, it is corrupt from top to bottom. Someone commented about Brazil yesterday how debts are inherited in that country, not to mention it's got outrageous income inequality.

Out of the big European countries, you've got the U.K. with cameras on every corner, and France where until recently it was a crime to insult the President. It has come out that Germany spies on people too, though apparently less than the U.S. to a degree (I guess just because of shorter retention periods).

Australia tried to put up a nation-wide internet wall a few years ago, so that's out. Canada? Canada does it too: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6870/125.

Libertarians like to put up Hong Kong as some shining example, but that's just proof that libertarians don't really value democracy (since Hong Kong doesn't even pretend to have democracy). Hong Kong apparently does less internet surveillance, except if you're a pro-democracy activist in which case all bets are off.

That leaves the Scandinavian countries, I suppose, but I have a hard time seeing a lot of libertarian-minded people fleeing the U.S. for that collectivist utopia.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be interesting to see whether companies start to shift to using encrypted email over the next few decades - it's not that hard to set up if you know the counterparty will be using encryption of the same kind, and if it's not a service bought in from an external company you can fairly sure it is secure. Companies could at least insist that intra-company email is encrypted, which would be a huge amount of their n…

Key exchange is still a huge issue. Sure, you can post a public key online, but I have no guarantee it is actually your key. How do I do business with somebody new? The core problem with widespread crypto use today is not encryption, it's trusted key exchange.

Put the fingerprint in your business cards? In fact, maybe we finally found a reasonable use for QR codes.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#354

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,…

Make the bastards work for it. Enough people using strong encryption (both for data over the wire and data at rest) makes big-data collection (can't dedupe random noise) and processing/datamining prohibitively expensive if not impossible. Nobody is getting in trouble for moving their data and services offshore. Aside from that? I'd suggest finding a few friendly people in various countries and establish a constant /d…

This is a brilliant suggestion actually. If I ever make a crypto messaging system I'll surely bake in a module that sends bogus messages to random nodes in the system. Then any sorts of metadata are useless to evil people.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#355
post #341

Is this really the end of freedom in the US? Does your constitution means nothing nowadays? Almost everybody here talks to move email elsewhere, etc. There are no positive comments. Does this mean that the US government has won and can do anything they want?

It's over.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#356
post #183

The US government is destroying one of the few bright spots in the American economy with its out of control military. It is unconscionable. And the sad thing is it has been enabled by the betrayal by many of the web 2.0 giants, Facebook, Google etc. Google especially is sad to see since they were willing to forgo the Chinese market on principle, but then decided that taking on the authoritarian US government was too…

If you are seriously suggesting that abandoning the US market is a realistic option, especially for a multibillion dollar corporation, then you are (and I'm not using this word lightly) an idiot . Not to mention that there is no US equivalent to the rampant human rights violations and censorship in China.

The US certainly has many more prisoners per capita and in total than China does.

Also, the U.S. government is censoring Ladar Levison of Lavabit and others in his situation.

I've never been to China to see anything for myself, so I won't make further comparison, but prison state thing definitely bothers me.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#357
post #288

If Congress has passed laws abridging the freedom of speech, then those laws are illegitimate. Unfortunately, it feels as if speaking favorably of the Constitution is enough to get put on a watch list anymore.

Congress can legally pass laws abridging freedom of speech, and has always been able to do so. For example, if someone were to talk up and threaten my life, that is not legally protected speech. Nor is blackmail, for that matter, nor the famous adage of shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater. For that matter, Congress can legally restrict speech in certain national security issues, and has, again, done so for a very l…

>the famous adage of shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time...

> In 1969, the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively overturned Schenck and any authority the case still carried. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech--and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan--is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action" (emphasis mine).

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#358

I like the part where he can't tell you why he's shutting down. As if we won't engage in rampant irresponsible speculation that they have told him to decrypt and forward everything to them in real time.

It's unlikely they asked him to decrypt and forward everything. Someone would immediately notice the change and raise the alarms.

Much more likely they asked him to slip in a backdoor for some specific users. That's much harder to detect.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#359
post #2

Source: https://lavabit.com/?repost=true This is very unfortunate and sad. I hope he wins in Court. The NSA/administration are really trying to destroy the last bit of privacy in the world, and they will fight relentlessly until they do (especially if the People aren't fighting back).

um okay. If it is what we think it is, what makes you think that he will wrestle with Feds if Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and other billion-dollars giants were not even interested pursuing the legal way? Most likely, this is all so secret with secret courts foreseeing secret rulings that unless he has solid capital to burn on legal defense, he won't get far. He won't get far probably either if he has the money…

Sometimes a David makes a bigger impression than a Goliath.

It's been years since I've worked with Ladar. However, he's a man of great intelligence and principle. It's not unheard of for "the little guy" to take on the machine and win. I believe that Ladar will prevail in the end, and I hope he'll resume operations or come up with something even better.

I'll be donating something as soon as I finish my post.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#360
Distributed cryptography/services in multiple jurisdictions is the only permanent solution or as a delaying tactic at a minimum. Where keys or parts of data or multiple onion style encryption rests in a chain of services distributed globally in multiple jurisdictions. Something like the Ceph file system but for everything.
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