How Lavabit Melted Down
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How Lavabit Melted Down
1–10 of 177 posts
Re: How Lavabit Melted Down
#2I am blown away by the bravery, I know I'd never be so bold.
Also confused why he didn't end up in prison on mysterious "pervert" charges out of the blue or even dead. And don't lecture me that is far fetched after this past year.
Re: How Lavabit Melted Down
#3I am blown away by the bravery, I know I'd never be so bold. Also confused why he didn't end up in prison on mysterious "pervert" charges out of the blue or even dead. And don't lecture me that is far fetched after this past year.
Well, if they killed him, they probably wouldn't be able to get the keys. And they probably had to keep the bigger "punishment", imprisonment, looming over his head in case he reveals confidential information about the case.
Re: How Lavabit Melted Down
#4The integrity and bravery he has shown in this fight is impressive. He has definitely earned enough "cred" to restart this business outside the US and be very successful.
Re: How Lavabit Melted Down
#5I am blown away by the bravery, I know I'd never be so bold. Also confused why he didn't end up in prison on mysterious "pervert" charges out of the blue or even dead. And don't lecture me that is far fetched after this past year.
Well, if they killed him, they probably wouldn't be able to get the keys. And they probably had to keep the bigger "punishment", imprisonment, looming over his head in case he reveals confidential information about the case.
It wouldn't surprise me if they had some sort of back door with Verisign or other certificate companies for this.
Re: How Lavabit Melted Down
#6I am blown away by the bravery, I know I'd never be so bold. Also confused why he didn't end up in prison on mysterious "pervert" charges out of the blue or even dead. And don't lecture me that is far fetched after this past year.
Maybe they read 1984 as a manual: don't destroy him, convert him. Or at least make an example of him.
Re: How Lavabit Melted Down
#7There is a huge disconnect between the "justice" system and technology which needs to end. You've seen it before if you're in IT, that glazed eyes look when explaining why their Word document is missing…
Anyone with judicial experience know if judges have trusted advisory panels that can help wrap their heads around technology to better rule on cases such as this?
Re: How Lavabit Melted Down
#8For the fortitude he has shown in fighting the good fight, please consider donating to his defense fund: http://lavabit.com/ (link at the end).
Re: How Lavabit Melted Down
#9The integrity and bravery he has shown in this fight is impressive. He has definitely earned enough "cred" to restart this business outside the US and be very successful.
We really need more companies (and those in control of those companies) that stand up for their customers this same way. A public company would not have been able to make this play, so keep that in mind when you are making decisions about where to put your data.
Re: How Lavabit Melted Down
#10The more I read the more sympathy I have for the government here. They had a (presumably lawfully obtained) warrant against a specific user; it's not they who designed lavabit such that it was impossible to execute this without obtaining access to every other user. The proposal that Levison would extract the information himself rather than turning over the keys strikes me as completely unrealistic - any information so obtained would be quite rightly thrown out of court, because there's no reliable evidentiary chain, only (in effect) Levison's word. Even if he had turned over the SSL keys, the US still has a fairly strong "fruit of the poison tree" doctrine: any information the government happened to obtain on other users would be invalid for prosecution because it wouldn't be covered by their search warrant.