As a user I'm essentially fucked. I can't change emails since the service is shut down... and the money I paid is now gone.
Lavabit abruptly shuts down
411–420 of 671 posts
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government can compel you to paint a wall green. They can't compel you to say you liked it. They especially can't compel you to break the law (assuming you set up some kind of situation where it's fraud/perjury/whatever to lie). And look at how email retention works.
>They especially can't compel you to break the law (assuming you set up some kind of situation where it's fraud/perjury/whatever to lie). They can most certainly hold you in contempt because you got your self in that mess. >look at how email retention works. Document retention policies are allowed because otherwise the civil court system would be prohibitively expensive (lawyers have to read all your email once you g…
Hold you in contempt for something you did years before the case was filed or the investigation even started? God, that's even worse than contempt of court for failing to say passwords under the fifth amendment.
I'm pretty sure I have some truecrypt containers I've forgotten the passwords to, sure hope I never get arrested!
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
He may not have been in charge of anything for four years, but it would be nice to see General Alexander condemning such specious reasoning and fear-mongering.
Is it fear-mongering? Sites actually do get hacked and defaced all the time for political advocacy (e.g. LulzSec). I've long been more afraid, in general, of computer hackers than government.
> " I've long been more afraid, in general, of computer hackers than government."
Seriously?
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
by the time he is done wish courts defending their users, Feds will be given chances to copy all users data over and over again about 250 times. So it doesn't matter whether he loses or wins. Not a bit.
Well, I can't agree with that. I do believe the only way to fight this sort of overreach is in the courts, and in the court of public opinion. Publicly standing up to bullying like this is the only way to provoke larger discussions, and ultimately to stop such actions in the future. In addition he doesn't have permission to just unilaterally wipe all his users' data, even if he wanted to. It was too late for his user…
Yep. Now I naturally have to e-mail all my friends and work contacts (from my throwaway Gmail address), not to mention the person I know who opened a personal Lavabit account on my recommendation, announcing to all that my e-mail address is changing - and such a message wouldn't be complete without mentioning the reason why, venting a little of my shock and disappointment, and perhaps dropping in a little potted history of the recent developments in government net snooping leading up to this with newspaper article links. Messages that I wouldn't have otherwise sent without this justification, for fear of boring my dear friends, having assumed that any of them who are likely to care about this stuff, will already have read about it themselves without me telling them.
Despite the annoyance of not being able to use my e-mail the past couple of days, and the possibility that the US Gov may have some copies of my e-mail (which I imagine will be perfectly useless to them) I am immensely gratified at the stand Lavabit's owner appears to have taken, and having chosen them in the first place due to these values which I am in broad alignment with, I feel it confirms that it was a good choice, despite the fact that I now have to find another provider. I am sorry for the guy that he's effectively had his business - perhaps his livelihood - pulled out from under him, and I will be donating to his defense fund out of sympathy, though I am not an American.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
This is why the "first amendment" issue might be the most important part of this - he might want to stand up and say "the Govenment wants to force me to backdoor my system, and I think Congress should change the law so this can't happen" , but he's not allowed to do so. Restricting this kind of clearly political speech is not right, is not just and is not democratic.
The first amendment issue is the most important part of this, and is in my opinion the strongest vector of attack in a potential litigation.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#416The 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.
There are plenty of human rights violations that the US commits as a matter of policy, due to its "War on Terror" - drone strikes and Guantanamo Bay are two major ones.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like the most secure way to send a message these days might be snail mail. While I know the feds to open it from time to time in specific cases, they definitely don't open all.
no, they don't open the mail, but they scan all the addresses as part of their routing process. We should assume that all postal "metadata" is stored forever.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#418For 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…
Edit: I was a PM on Exchange and Exchange Hosted Encryption for some time, so it looks like Lavabit tried to fight the government on whether they are required to release private keys. I've seen one other customer try to fight, and it was not pretty either. The US government in these cases are serious. Takeaway for fellow hackers: If you are building a system that stores user-generated data, prepare for the eventualit…
Yup, nothing new, even in Europe (Finland).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penet_remailer
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#419Maybe if you use Yandex Mail the US government will at least have to do the proper procedures in a Russian court, to get your data.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
Encrypting is a given - obviously you'd want to only be using Saas services in Germany etc that are fully encrypted. The problem in using USA services is that even if everything is fully encrypted, the USA can and will send goons around to take your data. Encryption is simply useless when dealing with a company in the USA who is forced to hand over the keys and whose data-centers can be legally entered and modified b…
The EU has minimum standards for surveillance and most EU member states are clearly American vassals. Even France proved to a vasall in forcing the Bolivian president's aircraft to make an unplanned stopover in Vienna … and even the neutral countries are full in favor of surveillance – Switzerland for example is just revising its surveillance laws and many other legal areas, for example copyright, see an increased le…
I thought France disavowed that involvement? Wasn't it just Austria bloviating, or was it hasty ass-covering by France?