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Lavabit abruptly shuts down

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Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#221

Post by claudius »

chmars wrote: post #130
meritt wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving services off USA-based companies is like using two bicycle locks instead of one. A determined government is still going to get your data, they just need to spend a bit more time. Focus instead on encryption.

There's not even the time factor. Western countries at least might theoretically not spy on their own citizens but the exchange data with partners intelligence services. And the US is by far not the only country that mandates surveillance cooperation for providers etc. Encryption is OK but doesn't solve the problem. There's always metadata and whom can your trust with your encryption? You have to assume that hardware…

> Western countries at least might theoretically not spy on their own citizens but the exchange data with partners intelligence services.

Hoping that this is true, moving to services from one’s home country would make some sense. Of course, this is more easily possible for people from larger countries than, say, Luxembourg.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#222

Post by pchristensen »

jlgreco wrote: post #194
toyg wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The political backlash attached to slapping an NSL on "Snowden's email provider" would have looked obvious to a 5-year-old, and any real player worth its salt would have run from Lavabit as soon as it hit the news. No, this has nothing to do with common criminals and everything to do with Snowden.

Didn't Italy nail a mob boss a few years ago because they were using a common substitution cipher?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_Provenzano

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#224

Post by nemothekid »

trimbo wrote: post #184
dmix wrote: post #12

From 2011: > Lavabit processes 70 gigabytes of data per day, is made up of 26 servers, hosts 260,000 email addresses, and processes 600,000 emails a day. That’s a lot of email. http://www.dbasoul.com/2011/1008.html Update: According to their stats page, they had 410k email accounts hosted before shutdown https://twitter.com/georgemaschke/status/365553445538775040

70 GB / 600K emails = 122KB per email. That's a large average even with headers. To put things in perspective, Costco's massive marketing email sent to me this morning is 138K including headers. So the question is, what were people sending though Lavabit that averaged 122K and would have attracted attention? Therein probably lies the reason for all of this.

A lot of outliers are screwing with that average. Think emails with powerpoint/keynote attachments, rich pdfs, photos, etc.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#225

Post by computer »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #94
raganwald wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he may not have been able to hand over the old data, but he may have been asked to include an exploit for all mail going forward. That could have been as simple as the authorities inserting some middleware.

This actually did happen with hushmail. It's hosted in Canada, but the US leaned on them hard enough that they ended up backdooring the client to let the feds snoop on the targeted user.

Background: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#226

Post by icesoldier »

joelrunyon wrote: post #166

> I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Anyone know what happens if he just says "F it" and writes a massive blog post on what exactly happened or what exactly they said to him?

My understanding is that he'd disappear somehow, either silently or violently.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#228

Post by darklajid »

ninguem2 wrote: post #193
sentenza wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accountability and culture. German intelligence services are "weaker" in the sense that they (seemlingly) still are under the control of the legislative body (secret contracts with the Western Allies sadly nonwithstanding). They are also regarded with deep distrust by large parts of the populace and by a significant segment of the legislature. It is quite possbible that, come September, some of the government parties…

>Accountability and culture The culture that brought us the SS and the Stasi.

  The culture that brought us the SS and the Stasi.
Really? Really? With an account that is as old as yours you cannot avoid posting a comment like this? Do you consider that mature? Useful? Reasonable?

I don't. You just disqualified yourself from any meaningful discussion, ever.

My wife treated people with mental issues for some time and I have the utmost respect for people that can handle this stuff.

You, instead, are without protection. You post stuff like this and shout out to the world that you have no clue, that you have no idea what your are talking about, what the topic of this thread is and .. just show that HN really should provide a feature to ignore other people.

Please - go away. You didn't contribute and you're a sad, sad idiot.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#229

Post by hkarthik »

guelo wrote: post #212
joelrunyon wrote: post #166

> I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Anyone know what happens if he just says "F it" and writes a massive blog post on what exactly happened or what exactly they said to him?

He'd probably go to jail immediately and then spend years working the case through the courts in the hopes of getting a Supreme Court decision striking the law down as unconstitutional.

Probably worse. They'll often go after family members (siblings, parents, extended family) and their businesses until you comply.

Re: Lavabit abruptly shuts down

#230

Post by sneak »

guelo wrote: post #183

The 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…

I wrote an article a year or two ago entitled "Don't Be Evil, or comply with the PATRIOT Act?"

The companies with the ability to move all operations out of US jurisdiction/coercion who don't do so are complicit in all of this.

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