Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Edward Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down Amid Secret Court Battle

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 90 posts

Re: Edward Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down Amid Secret Court Battle

#31

Post by shasta »

cheald wrote: post #8
mpyne wrote: post #5

"Court records show that, in June, Lavabit complied with a routine search warrant targeting a child pornography suspect in a federal case in Maryland. That suggests that Levison isn’t a privacy absolutist. Whatever compelled him to shut down now must have been exceptional." Wow. Now I'm even more interested at what the NSL/court order was looking for here.

I will put dollars to donuts they were after Snowden's contact list. They want to know about his deadman's switch, who holds the keys, and who they have to squeeze to defuse that particular landline.

They're not asking for any particular information that lavabit has now. If they were, shutting down wouldn't be a solution to not handing it over. They are asking for additional access going forward.

Re: Edward Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down Amid Secret Court Battle

#32

Post by nodata »

mpyne wrote: post #5

"Court records show that, in June, Lavabit complied with a routine search warrant targeting a child pornography suspect in a federal case in Maryland. That suggests that Levison isn’t a privacy absolutist. Whatever compelled him to shut down now must have been exceptional." Wow. Now I'm even more interested at what the NSL/court order was looking for here.

Spot the smear.

Re: Edward Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down Amid Secret Court Battle

#33

Post by pyre »

jlgreco wrote: post #24
oleganza wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would risk their own life to do that for "the good of many"? People like Snowden are exceptions, not a rule, because the guns are out there pointed to everyone. Why don't we instead of asking individual heroes to fight a killing machine called "the state", do that: 1. Acknowledge the evil of the state. 2. Find practical non-violent ways to boycott it. E.g. blacklist personally everyone involved in violent aggress…

I doubt, even in our current situation, that Jury members would become targets if they refused to convict.

I think we're referring to the person willing to put their freedom at risk to wager that a jury nullification would happen as the 'hero.'

Re: Edward Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down Amid Secret Court Battle

#34

Post by betterunix »

siculars wrote: post #30

Distributed cryptography/services in multiple jurisdictions is the only permanent solution or as a delaying tactic at a minimum. Where keys or parts of data or multiple onion style encryption rests in a chain of services distributed globally in multiple jurisdictions. Something like the Ceph file system but for everything.

Sounds like anonymous remailers to me. Unfortunately it is impractical to run a remailer in many countries, the USA included, because of the approach law enforcement agencies take to remailers (basically, "attack the datacenter with a team of soldiers").

Re: Edward Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down Amid Secret Court Battle

#36

Post by betterunix »

mpyne wrote: post #5

"Court records show that, in June, Lavabit complied with a routine search warrant targeting a child pornography suspect in a federal case in Maryland. That suggests that Levison isn’t a privacy absolutist. Whatever compelled him to shut down now must have been exceptional." Wow. Now I'm even more interested at what the NSL/court order was looking for here.

Probably secret keys for all the users, along with TLS secret keys, user records, etc. Nothing extraordinary for the US government to demand; what is extraordinary is for a service provider to shut down because of it.

Re: Edward Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down Amid Secret Court Battle

#37

Post by 001sky »

conductor wrote: post #7
oo7jeep wrote: post #2

TL,DR: "This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States."

If this is happening in the USA with its famous constitution, then well, I think the end of this statement can be easily converted just to _any_country_.

Swiss banking (famously) had this niche biz model, but its future seems unteneable in the digital era. Silicon Valley has been complicit behind the scenes. Both overtly with technical hw/sw, and also more subtly (ie, "personalization" from which you can't opt out).

Re: Edward Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down Amid Secret Court Battle

#38

Post by ChuckMcM »

oleganza wrote: post #20
ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

So for those of you wondering about Jury nullification, the way it would work in this case is that Levison would reveal that the NSA was hounding him with NSL letters, they would charge him with violating the terms of the NSL and the jury would acquit him anyway. I hope we can get a case like that to move that aspect of the conversation forward. It helped get bad laws off the books in the civil rights cases and it wo…

Who would risk their own life to do that for "the good of many"? People like Snowden are exceptions, not a rule, because the guns are out there pointed to everyone. Why don't we instead of asking individual heroes to fight a killing machine called "the state", do that: 1. Acknowledge the evil of the state. 2. Find practical non-violent ways to boycott it. E.g. blacklist personally everyone involved in violent aggress…

> Who would risk their own life to do that for "the good of many"?

People who feel strongly about what is right, versus what the law says, do.

Re: Edward Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down Amid Secret Court Battle

#40

Post by betterunix »

mililani wrote: post #35

So, since HN is filled with smart engineers, how should one build a sustainable, fully encrypted email service untouchable by the Feds?

It already exists. Use PGP, send messages through anonymous remailers. If you cannot use anonymous remailers, post messages to Usenet in alt.anonymous.messages using Tor. If not Tor, then via a proxy server. If none of the above, just make sure you are not doing it from your house. If even that is impossible, know that traffic analysis will be possible.

Why is this something that needs to be repeated to the technically skilled people on HN?

Post reply on HN