FBI director Comey backs new Feinstein push for decrypt bill

https://www.wired.com/2014/04/lavabit-ruling/

"The case began in June, when Texas-based Lavabit was served with a “pen register” order requiring it to give the government a live feed of the email activity on a particular account."

"Levison resisted the order on the grounds that he couldn’t comply without reprogramming the elaborate encryption system he’d built to protect his users’ privacy."

"So in July the government served Levison with a search warrant striking at the Achilles’ heel of his system: the private SSL key that would allow the FBI to decrypt traffic to and from the site, and collect Snowden’s metadata directly."

In other words, they asked him to write software to get just metadata for Snowden's correspondences and when he delayed, they requested everything.

> You can't use discovery to force someone to write software the doesn't exist to provide additional functionality to a product.

You absolutely can.

https://www.federalrulesofcivilprocedure.org/frcp/title-v-di...

"A party may serve on any other party a request ... to produce ... any designated documents ... stored in any medium from which information can be obtained either directly or, if necessary, after translation by the responding party into a reasonably usable form."

If the amount of translation is infeasible without writing scripts, you can be forced to write scripts.

But again, the whole point of this discovery tangent was to show that courts can and very often do "force someone to work for you," which I will assume you now concede is true. Let's stick to the Lavabit case and what constitutes illegal compelled speech, as these are the points on which we still disagree.

I can't tell if you're trying to troll me or what at this point. I link you to the lavabit case details then you link me to the lavabit details.

They wanted a "pen register" which assumes reasonable hook-up-ability. This wasn't possible without reprogramming the system. This made it unreasonable and it was withdrawn. Then they asked for the SSL key so they could use a pen register. The owner suggested, instead of the SSL key, that he write software to avoid it and they declined so he shut it down.

You stated I got it wrong but my original post was factual and specifically referenced the wikipedia article that references the exact order. Nothing that you have posted has shown otherwise.

> > You can't use discovery to force someone to write software the doesn't exist to provide additional functionality to a product.

> You absolutely can.

> https://www.federalrulesofcivilprocedure.org/frcp/title-v-di....

> "A party may serve on any other party a request ... to produce ... any designated documents ... stored in any medium from which information can be obtained either directly or, if necessary, after translation by the responding party into a reasonably usable form."

But you can't. Translation cannot be twisted to meaning "develop a new feature that creates another way to enter a system". It just can't.

> But again, the whole point of this discovery tangent was to show that courts can and very often do "force someone to work for you," which I will assume you now concede is true.

The best they can do, again, is reasonable collection from a medium which consists of direct or requiring translation. I'm not sure what I would concede here as nothing I have said goes against the sources you have posted.

As far as I am concerned this conversation is over as I do not see the value in continuing to repeat the same information, over and over.

Even so, terrorism may have cumulative political and social effects. People don't like to know there are others out there who wish them harm. Once a certain threshold of resentment is reached within an affected society then suddenly massive unrest could erupt.

Some politicians are trying to mitigate this by suggesting we should just get used to the occasional terrorist attack and treat it like a lightning strike or a piece of heavy furniture falling over.