Snowden uses Lavabit email service. Snowden leaks top secret material belonging to US and UK. US demands Snowden's emails from Lavabit. Lavabit shuts down.
pj reads news of Lavabit and concludes that email is not anonymous. (Email was never truly anonymous, unless you count anonymous remailers. Surely she knew this.) pj concludes that she should shut down Groklaw. (Why not just warn everyone that she will comply with legal requirements, like Google and myriad other web-based businesses do, for example. Millions of people still use these services even with that warning.) pj concludes that she should no longer use "the internet" (cf. email). (Huh? Email is but one use of the internet; it was designed ages ago and was never intended to be anonymous.)
Are people who leak top secret material and are wanted by US authorities sending emails to pj? If not, then please help me understand pj's logic.
If Snowden sent emails to pj, and pj, like Lavabit, does not wish to comply with authorities and hand over whatever they've got, then I guess shutting down Groklaw makes sense. I guess.
You cannot have a right to privacy as Brandeis envisioned it when you lack any reasonable expectation of privacy. Reading pj's post it sounds like she's abandoned _all_ expectations of privacy with respect to the internet (which includes email among so many other potential uses). This reeks of "all-or-nothing" thinking.
Lawmakers have no reason to exceed the expectations of their employers. If you the voter and taxpayer expect zero privacy, you should not be surprised if that's what is delivered.