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Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

theguardian.com

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Re: Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

#71

Post by podperson »

RyanZAG wrote: post #19
criley2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reply on Reddit when I see people bring that up is simple: You insult people who have experienced a police state by calling what we are experiencing a police state. A police state has no distinction between legislation and executive. Our legislation is currently investigating the president for: * CIA coverup of the attack on our Benghazi consulate' * IRS targeting of political opposition They're planning on using…

I agree with you in that a key difference would be if people were held accountable for illegal acts. However, simply investigating the president is not enough - it would actually need to be possible for him to be accused and held liable. An investigation in which the conclusion is already obvious and no one will be held accountable is not really an investigation, it is only smoke and mirrors. Throwing out one set of…

So your problem is that the country doesn't treat people as guilty until proven innocent?

Re: Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

#72

Post by xradionut »

twoodfin wrote: post #37
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being pedantic. No knock, no warrant, no redress when they murder you or a loved one for your family = police state, plain and simple.

I hope pg is reading these comments and is pleased that hn has become one more of the innumerable discussion boards where calling the U.S. a "police state, plain and simple" has become part of the everyday discourse. Yuck. I know there has always been a strain of the paranoid (sometimes well-earned) in hacker culture, but presumably it wasn't what this site was built to highlight.

This is an issue among programmers and technical people because it affects us politically and monetarily. Who wants to use SAAS (aka Amazon, Azure, etc), when security is compromised? Why can't I trust Google, Yahoo or Microsoft? Why should I build any services or web sites when they can pulled/compromised just because a certain user or group accessed them or I pissed someone of power off?

Yuck is right. The truth is yucky. "The truth will set you free, but it's gonna piss you off first"

Re: Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

#73

Post by celticninja »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #11
criley2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reply on Reddit when I see people bring that up is simple: You insult people who have experienced a police state by calling what we are experiencing a police state. A police state has no distinction between legislation and executive. Our legislation is currently investigating the president for: * CIA coverup of the attack on our Benghazi consulate' * IRS targeting of political opposition They're planning on using…

I think you're being pedantic. No knock, no warrant, no redress when they murder you or a loved one for your family = police state, plain and simple.

That they can take your assests without proving any criminal wrongdoing surely tips the balance into police state.

Re: Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

#74

Post by jusben1369 »

Help me with this. A) I'm a non dev and b) I'm trying to cut to the chase vs use inflamed terms like Freedom of Speech and Police State. I'm piecing this together from the few comments I see that trying and get to the core of the issue.

i) Lavabit's provided a communication service (email) that was uniquely designed so as the content's literally did not touch their servers. Therefore, if the NSA came to them wanting to look at communications by their users they would literally be told "It's impossible to do that" ii) NSA (or government in general) says "We cannot allow you to have a service that is completely untraceable. You need to begin having a way to trace this. iii) Lavabit's understands that this is their commercial value proposition. Should they be forced to do this they literally go out of business. iv) They fight it hard for a while but realize it's futile so shut up shop vs slowly go out of business.

Is that right?

As a side note I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the Greenwald/Snowden circular loop. It's very close to a propaganda loop and not all that different to other media outlets who get two like minded people and thus really just have a mutually agreeable conversation vs a reporting role. The danger being of course it's passed off as news by being positioned as such.

Re: Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

#75

Post by neutronicus »

spodek wrote: post #5

"Can we call it a police state now?" I saw the question on Reddit after a different revelation last month. I feel like we're going to ask that question more and more. I can only hope more and more of us are inspired, as Snowden was by Levinson (Lavabit's CEO) and many of us have been by both of them, and we act to protect ourselves and constrain our governments from overreaching to where they can't help repeating the…

So, my apartment-mate last year was from Belarus.

I got in a bicycle accident on my way home, and somehow managed to get myself home (I don't remember this part) with my face pretty much split open. So, I called 911, and an ambulance and some cops came. The cops asked him some questions.

He freaked out. I got this lecture the next day about how he didn't sign up for this, how I needed to keep his name out of my trouble, how I'm bad news, etc.

I couldn't help but think that talking to the police meant something very, very different where he's from than where I am.

Food for thought.

Re: Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

#76

Post by rumbler »

MrKurtz wrote: post #29
mtgx wrote: post #6

Snowden: "Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests the same way". Indeed, they must. Your move Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple.

Shifting the blame and the burden for policy reform onto firms is not only silly but also unfair, you can't really expect them to shut down, they are not one man operations like Lavabit.

> you can't really expect them to shut down

Well, before a few weeks ago, I couldn't really expect my government to spy on all its citizens, use secret courts to bully companies into giving them access to my data, share it with law enforcement for "parallel construction" (intelligence laundering) purposes, and lie to congress about what they were doing.

If you had told me a few decades ago that this would be the situation in the United States at the start of the 21st century, I would have laughed in your face and called you a crackpot, a lunatic, a conspiracy theorist. Absent something like losing World War III, there was no way the United States could become a totalitarian state in my lifetime.

Yet here we are.

Re: Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

#77

Post by dmix »

jusben1369 wrote: post #74

Help me with this. A) I'm a non dev and b) I'm trying to cut to the chase vs use inflamed terms like Freedom of Speech and Police State. I'm piecing this together from the few comments I see that trying and get to the core of the issue. i) Lavabit's provided a communication service (email) that was uniquely designed so as the content's literally did not touch their servers. Therefore, if the NSA came to them wanting…

> that was uniquely designed so as the content's literally did not touch their servers

It only touched their servers in encrypted form, never plaintext.

They would have had to wiretap their customer to retrieve content (for example, client side JS monitoring the next time the user accessed their email on the server) since all email was encrypted on the server harddrives and only accessible via the user.

Instead if it wasn't encrypted they could have used a normal search warrant which would have given the police access to the plaintext content immediately.

What was unique about Lavabit is that they never had the ability to decrypt the content without involving the user, since they never had the "private key".

Re: Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

#78

Post by wil421 »

Now that we are seeing more and more publicity surrounding this issue and companies are at least attempting to be transparent, how can we spark a fundamental change in the way the Govt sees this issue.

The public need to hold these people accountable in some fashion, criminally is probably out of the question. Whether it be by some investigation committee by congress, supreme court intervention, or simply voting the current incumbents out.

We need to stop the Govt from just abiding by the letter of the laws and not by going with the Spirit of the law. The Government shouldnt be finding loop holes in their laws or playing games about the meaning of words when the are questioned by officials.

Re: Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

#79

Post by twoodfin »

MisterWebz wrote: post #69
twoodfin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope pg is reading these comments and is pleased that hn has become one more of the innumerable discussion boards where calling the U.S. a "police state, plain and simple" has become part of the everyday discourse. Yuck. I know there has always been a strain of the paranoid (sometimes well-earned) in hacker culture, but presumably it wasn't what this site was built to highlight.

You can increase the quality of HN threads by replying to such "paranoid" comments with a counter-argument instead of complaining.

criley2 did that and got the cookie-cutter response I replied to. That response is the same as you'd read on any of a hundred boards that love to tread over and over through black-helicopter-ville. Nobody's mind is being changed and nothing new is being added to the discussion. Like those boards, it's boring as hell.

Re: Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies

#80

Post by ispolin »

00rion wrote: post #59
twoodfin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope pg is reading these comments and is pleased that hn has become one more of the innumerable discussion boards where calling the U.S. a "police state, plain and simple" has become part of the everyday discourse. Yuck. I know there has always been a strain of the paranoid (sometimes well-earned) in hacker culture, but presumably it wasn't what this site was built to highlight.

If you don't like the conversation then leave.

If he doesn't like the conversation, let's encourage him to stay and provide evidence for his point so that HN doesn't become an echo chamber. I find this model very helpful: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
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