Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just lost access to my primary email account.
Did you get a refund?
I did pay in advance for few years but I wont ask for a refund, I will consider it as a donation for those legal battles.
Lavabit abruptly shuts down
601–610 of 671 posts
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's a cool idea. I'm totally gonna do that :)
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I've never been to China to see anything for myself... Yep, I can tell. I can tell you haven't read about it either.
Numbers, facts, anything. Please substantiate your comment, instead of adding nothing but snark to the discussion. Here, i'll start: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23pri...
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#604Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand what you mean but I think the term '3rd world country' could be a bit discouraging to some of our American friends who might not have a clear picture about realities in our part of the world. For example I also live in a small EU country. By no means this is a 3rd world country - we have pretty strong IT industry (e.g. some globally successful antivirus companies etc.) and the country is certainly develo…
Hah, good point. I bet most of Americans (no offence here) imagine that "3rd world" means "people still live in caves and hunts wild animals for food". However, a very good counter example is Skype which went worldwide even though started in a small, 3rd world country known as Estonia.
Although I really hope that nobody would label Estonia (or any other EU country) as '3rd world' country now.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#605What about relocating to South America? Perhaps Bolivia? Bolivia is _really_ pissed about USA ... I know as I live here.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
It all happens on the client side. Servers only store the encrypted emails and have no idea what the contents or the keys are.
The same server(s) also control the JavaScript code run by the client/browser. They could serve special code (to any one the government wanted to spy on) that returned their password to the server.
That's exactly why LavaBit shut down, looks like they were forced to do that.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't choose Germany. We may have strict privacy laws here, but we also have the BND cooperating with the NSA, tapping directly into the main internet nodes (Frankfurt). And don't forget that part of the method of the NSA is to use a mule inside the target company, which would be very easy in Germany given its status of being a wannabe ally of the USA and the longstanding sympathy of the german public for the USA. An…
It took me a while to understand that you probably mean Iceland.
I did - Island is german name. Happens from time to time that I mix languages.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are you going to figure out whether it's random encrypted noise or an unrandom encrypted message?
White noise has distinct statistical properties that allow to mitigate it's effect on detection of meaningful signal. E.g. filtering white noise from audio stream is a very common operation. Sending packets to all contacts at random is a form of introducing white noise, vulnerable to signal processing techniques known and used from 1950s.
I thought the point of encryption was that the end result is supposed to be indistinguishable from noise.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#609I'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 alt…
It's not just going to be hosting providers that are affected by this. It's going to lawyers, software engineers, sys admins, writers and graphic designers who are going to lose work/business from SAAS companies. Software is one of the few areas where the US economy is growing somewhat sustainably (as opposed to banking/gambling/housing speculation/medical expenses for elderly). The NSA and all those NSA contractors…
I guess the obvious question to this post is:
What are you doing on your own checklist? Those are some pretty extremist notions.
If part of your hiring criteria was to exclude anyone who had worked for a contractor or directly for a government organization, I doubt many people would want to work for you. Not because they had violated your criteria, either.
Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couldn't you just leave off the return address? In this case there's not much metadata to collect except for the recipient address.
I did a fun experiment once. I wrote the actual recipient address in the return address place, and put a non existant address in the front. I also didn't stamp it. It did arrive to the recipient 2 weeks later, with a "return to sender" banner.
Working in the mailing business and dealing with the USPS carriers; they are not dummies (the usual people warning here) and if someone gets curious on why so many pieces arrive at a certain address w/o postage, I would expect that address to get flagged for a special looksee.