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Encrypted Email Provider Lavabit Shuts Down, Blames US Gov't
clorkster writes to note the following explanation posted to the front page of encrypted email provider Lavabit: "'I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. 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. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.' No doubt this has much to do with Snowden's use of the provider."
So it has come to this.
It will be better to purchase from an owner who is a good farmer and a good builder.
I once lived there. I've been a tourist there a couple of times. I don't think I'll ever set mu foot there again. Good luck.
Where at least I know I'm free!
I applaud him for taking a stance against the snooping. Unfortune that he had to shut the service down though. Maybe he can move it offshore.
Leak all the secret things the government is doing and all the information Lavabit's not allowed to tell us to Glenn Greenwald.
Then move to Russia.
So when Obama boycotts a meeting with the Russians due to concerns over "human rights", you may now know that this is a lie.
If only ALL THIS had come out before the 2012 elections things would be different now !!
Or would they ??
Anyone know a good freedom dealer? I'm an addict and need my fix of freedom, but I can't seem to find it within the borders of the US at this point.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I once lived there. I've been a tourist there a couple of times. I don't think I'll ever set mu foot there again. Good luck.
There's a great Piroshky stand in the East terminal of the airport, you should try it.
Why not just bring up Bavalit?
In my mind, disallowing people from criticizing government actions and government policy is a serious violation of the First Amendment. It is exactly what the First Amendment was written to prevent. I hope someone will challenge this issue in court.
I am surprised the government let him shut down. That action alone probably violated the gag order.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That system go shut down by the Church of Scientology. The powers that be fear a populous they can not spy on.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
The operator of Lavabit CAN legally discuss what is happening. He cannot *safely* do so, because our government does not obey the law, and will punish him for exercising his first amendment rights.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Clearly the operator of Lavabit received a national security letter or warrant which he objected to.
Now since Lavabit is based on normal mail protocols, the operator has the ability to see all the data when it comes in, and obviously with a warrant or NSL, the provider can be compelled to provide the information to the feds. But I suspect that the request was not just something mild ("This sleazebag's mail account") but something broader, given the reaction was to close down the service completely.
In any case, this is also a great reminder of why the cloud, especially US cloud providers, can't be trusted. Companies who care about security are going to have to abandon the cloud and go back to insourcing their infrastructure.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Am I getting this right? They shut down their email service from one moment to the other without warning users about it, without letting users backup their email?
Why isn't the entire Republican party standing up for this provider, telling government to get out of the way of business? He built that! Now, if he's been a multi-trillion dollar bank, the government would leave him alone, hell, he'd be telling the government what to do.
This is just another example of "might makes right, we're a bully, and we're going to push the world around, usa #1 F-yeah!"
We are living in a police state; there's no doubt about that at this point.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Is someone really still stupid enough to believe America (especially) or any other western country (Americas whore-states) are free? Jesus, US is heading into a new, corporate-style of fucking fascism. It will still be fascism in the end. And all the people were to afraid to speak out.
If you can't smother the shitstorm in the media, you might as well get all your dirty work done in short order so this rash of privacy and human rights abuses can becomes last week's news as soon as possible.
the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise.
Congress does not have the authority to violate the Constitution. They can "pass" all the bullshit "laws" they want, but the fact remains that there is not a soul in the federal government who has the power to supersede our Constitutional Liberties. The only, ONLY legitimate way to alter the content of said document would be via a Constitutional Amendment approved by 2/3 of all state legislatures, or by the formation of a Constitutional Congress. Neither of these events have occurred, therefore your right to tell us that the NSA is trying to force you to turn over your encryption keys stands firm. Fuck you Stasi dogfuckers ('cuz I know you're skimming this).
FYI, by making such a statement, and doing as they tell you, you're only helping them perpetuate the myth that they can do this kind of shit and get away with it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
From the front page of Lavabit: "Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund".
Well, i am just a Greek, but defending your constitution (the whole of it, not just a part) against internal and external threats is also expensive and you have to pay the price helping the American Defence by sharing some of that costs - you have enemies so those rights you always demand must be reduced a little.
Is this Levison guy legitimate ? He is asking for money, maybe this is a scam ???
that flag still fly O'er the land of the free ?
"Lavabit - an encrypted email service which is used by pedophiles and terrorist networks - was shut down after refusing to give the government access to important data that could have lead to arrests."
What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.
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.
Sincerely,
Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC
Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.
He leaves a link to donote to their legal defense fund. In other words, he's still fighting it, but in secret shadow court.
The government obey the law
No they don't, they have taken to just ignoring the law, using it primarily these days as a tool only against those they disagree with or for partisan attack.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The message here is very clear. You either go along with what the executive branch wants you to do, which is plainly goes against the 4th and 1st amendments or you are a traitor. The stunning lack of previous resistance by corporations that provide internet, phone, and telegraph service to NSA's agenda have created the expectation that corporate "people" are willing to cough up data that lets the US spy on its citizens on a massive scale without any kind of objection.
So, instead of fixing its behavior (or at least make it a bit less visible), US government (and its corporate sponsors) decided to go out and spy+opress its citizens officially. You're at the tipping point, folks. Your lovely government is now switching from covert police state to overt tyranical regime. This process will propably take another year or two until you'll get pretty much where nazi Germany was in 1939. Your favorite TV station will inform you every day how many "enemies of America" were caught/jailed/murdered this week and you'll fear every day if FBI squad will raid your house because of some phony suspicion.
Having said that, I'd recommend Americans, especially young ones to have second passport and be ready to leave this shithole when things go full retard (eg. your fucked up government starts some mega-war and will need as much cannon fodder as possible).
When is FOX news going to come to defend Lavabit against the oppressive Obama regime?
Surely the government violating the constitution to get at Lavabit's data and thus compeling them to shut down is as outrageous as Obamacare and all of the businesses FOX claims it is destroying.
Just yesterday, I was thinking - What if am I the owner of some internet company (email, service provider,.....) and feds send me "THE LETTER".
I would shut down the company, rather than surrender to the feds.
Today, I found out someone indeed closed the company for the same reason.
I'm a Lavabit user, and this is the absolute first I've heard of this. We had no warning and since yesterday the mail servers have been down. I assume we'll never get them back either.
I appreciate the sentiment and all, but you could have done it with a bit more professionalism than just disappearing one day, leaving those of us with Lavabit accounts completely in the lurch.
Dieser Fall ist klar,
Lieber Herr Kommissar,
Auch wenn sie and'rer Meinung sind:
Den Schnee auf dem wir alle
Talwärts fahr'n,
Kennt heute jedes Kind.
Jetzt das Kinderlied:
“Dreh dich nicht um, schau, schau,
der Kommissar geht um!
Er hat die Kraft und wir sind klein und dumm,
dieser Frust macht uns Stumm.”
This case is clear,
Dear Mr. Commissioner,
Even if you have a different opinion:
The snow on which we all
ski downhill,
every child knows.
Now the nursery rhyme:
“Don't turn around, look, look,
the Kommissar is out and about!
He has the power and we're little and dumb;
this frustration makes us mum.”
So much that even the service providers can't see the data.
It'll happen.
Of all the white bourgie soccer mom's I've seen driving with cell phones attached to their head in my north chicago suburb, the only person I actually know who got a ticket for driving while talking was a cell phone, was an american citizen of mexican decent.
The http://prism-break.org website currently only lists three alternatives to Lavabit. One of them is also hosted in the US. So that leaves only https://mykolab.com/ and http://www.autistici.org/en/index.html
MyKolab seems to be great: hosted in Switzerland and 100% Open Source that can be self hosted. Is there anything else or should I stop looking?
I'm a former Lavabit customer and I was really hoping for a slew of recommendations for alternative privacy-minded email providers, based in stable countries outside of the US. That's most of the reason why I'm reading through the comments here but so far the only option I see is VFEmail... seems like a decent service, but they're more focused on spam than privacy and they're US based.
This is evidence "Lavabit" worked.
1000 people ask for his source code and make the take downs very, very complicated.
We do know that the actions of the government in this case are illegal, because Lavabit's ability to respond to this search has been silenced by the coercive power of the government.
Any judicial programs which are exempted from public oversight are unconstitutional by nature.
After all, if the means used were legal, reasonable, and would be supported by civil society, there would be no reason to hide them from the public. Right?
I don't care about this. It doesn't affect me. I'm sure the government is just trying to protect me anyway.
When do the Kardashians come on?
Sincerely,
99% of Americans
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What is/was the difference between this email service and others?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
They are still fighting this and are asking for donations - see the PayPal link at the end of http://lavabit.com/
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It seems like the EU, and Germany in particular, takes privacy much more seriously then the US. Even without encryption, it seems like it's harder for authorities to do casual snooping on email contents in the EU.
I realize that the NSA is hoovering up all email traffic anyway, so at some level it makes no difference. Still, it seems that there are some usage barriers that keep local law enforcement from getting completely open access to email right now. And there is some security through obscurity. I expect this will get much worse fairly soon, since that's the way we're headed. Email based in the EU might offer some level of protection in that circumstance.
Why is Snark Required?
Maybe not this moment, but I feel it will be soon.
TFA says "suspend operations." So maybe contributing to the defense fund is a good idea?
"Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency."
-- President Barrack Obama, January 21, 2009
I always assume email encryption only makes sense if it's end-to-end, so what does an "encrypted email provider" do? Conceal sender & receiver addresses? Guarantee encrypted transport?
How the fuck am I going to migrate all of the accounts (amazon, etc) associated with my lavabit e-mail address?
Enigmail
GnuPG
A little research and you'll be able to provide yourself reasonable privacy.
It might not stand up to the greatest efforts of the NSA, but it will slow them down some.
Also, disconnect.me because the NSA isn't the only one snooping.
Fuck 'em all.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What is a good alternative to lavabit?
My name is Anthony Coulter. I signed up for Lavabit on October 5, 2009 with the address anthonycoulter(at)lavabit.com. I chose Lavabit very consciously. My university email address was about to expire and I had concerns about Google's privacy policies. Lavabit was created specifically for privacy-conscious people. They offered server-side encryption to paying customers; when I became a paying customer a year or two later I decided to check that box because, hell, why not?
[Note that I never did ask how server-side encryption worked. They said that things were rigged up so that they could not decrypt my on-server email even if they were coerced into it. My guess was that they used a hash of your login password to decrypt your email. I didn't know whether it was true or not, but I didn't think it really mattered. Apparently it did matter.]
I use my Lavabit account for everything. My bank statements are mailed to it. Most of my internet login IDs created since 2009 depend on it. All of my friends use it. And now it's gone.
I last checked my email around 9pm on Tuesday, August 6. When I woke up the next morning my connection attempts to the Lavabit server timed out. That was inconvenient; I had to send some information to my parents about an upcoming family reunion, so I sent them a text message promising to email it to them when the service was restored Wednesday night. It wasn't; I finally sent the email from an old family account I used back in the late 1990s. When I woke up *this* morning and Lavabit was still down, I did a couple of Google searches to see if anyone else noticed that an email provider had been gone for twenty-four straight hours. I found this discussion, which I quote for the benefit of people who will read this post long after the forum has ceased to exist:
This was posted at 10:55pm last night; when I saw it this morning I instantly dismissed the poster as a childish Internet revolutionary. The idea that the Federal government would clog up Lavabit for an entire day and a half just to get at Snowden is silly! They can't disrupt business like that!
Then I ran another Google search for "lavabit down" before getting off work today, and... here we are. Emails sent to my lavabit account still don't get bounce warnings, so noone who's emailed me since 9pm on Tuesday will know that I didn't get their email, or that I never will. I also have to go through the long and tedious process of reassociating all of my Internet accounts with a new email address. But which provider will I choose? I still don't trust Google. I don't know what I'll do yet; it was only two hours ago when discovered that my four-year-old email address had been taken down by the Federal government.
I just donated two thousand dollars to Lavabit's legal defense fund. (The confirmation email from Paypal just arrived in my old Cox account.) I cannot prove this to the Internet, and it's debatably silly for someone so privacy-conscious to want to do so. But at some point we will have to take this issue seriously. I watched the Snowden news from a distance; I didn't say or do anything about it because it wasn't really my problem. Now I lost my email, and if I had used IMAP this would have been a tragedy of enormous proportions.
--Anthony Coulter, a.k.a. Red Jesus
This story is only two hour old and has already exploded. Snowden has officially become a martyr. Brazil is sounding less and less like a fictional film and more like a scary prophecy.
Up to the point the Supreme Court slaps them down.
Do you want to test the legality of some law that (you believe) violates the (nth) amendment? You have to be prepared to fight it in court, and fight it to the Supreme Court in many, many cases.
And the Supreme Court may allow the law to stand.
State secrets privilege, particularly the seminal United States v Reynolds
National Security letters and Warrant canaries (canaries may or may not be termed legal; a NSL may instruct to "not take down the canary", for instance)
Children's Internet Protection Act (found constitutional)
Communications Decency Act (portions struck down)
It's a crap shoot. The state secrets privilege, for instance, was clearly illegal behavior but the court allowed it to stand.
is your emails are unencrypted in the hands of ?
Time to run if you can. Just not to Russia!
Far too many people on Slashdot need to do some foreign travel, or at least a good glass of perspective and soda. The US is far from perfect on, well, all fronts. In terms of privacy there have been some very disturbing developments lately (though anyone who thinks it is the first time needs to learn history). However that does not automatically mean the US is horrible, the worst country in the world, that other countries have no abuses, or at least none worth mentioning.
Russia has real, real problems in terms of human rights, basic freedoms, government control, and so on. They are sliding towards the bad old days of a soviet like system at an alarming rate. It is far worse than anything happening in the US. Now none of that means what is happening in the US is good, but please stop with the bullshit.
Honestly it is a literally childlike view of things where there is only a binary system of morality: good and bad, and they are always opposed. So if the US does something bad they are bad and that means anyone against the US must be good.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/lavabit-snowden/
That explains a few things.
And you have gotten him. He is doing what every tyrant does - shuts up any opposition... Congratulations - this should be your ideal world.
You know how the NRA claims it needs guns for the time when the government oppresses its people? Well grow some balls, make good on your claims, prove that you aren't just cowardly rednecks and fix your fucking country!
Fuck Obama Fuck Obama Fuck Obama Fuck Obama Fuck Obama
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition.
I don't fathom why people seem so shocked by this turn of events.
The liberal politician Gore Vidal once remarked that "Now that the Great Red Menace is gone, the government can turn it's attention to the real enemy, which is now, and always has been, The People."
It always impressed me that when the Soviet Union fell apart, a huge number of "security" workers in GDR's Stasi ended up out of work. It seems that similarly to the end of WWII when rocket scientists were looking for a place to ply their trade, the US government stepped in and acquired their talents.
I've always thought that our government - the US government - should have named the agency who handles US security the UStasi. They've learned well from our East German mentors, and are in the process of jailing enemy combatants forever without trial, intercepting everyone's email and phone calls. They don't file body odor samples "for the dogs" yet, but they want to take DNA from everyone that is arrested, conviction or not. They want warrentless searches and that pesky Fourth Amendment is just an inconvenience. Who cares about the right to not self-incriminate, cough up those passwords, or else. General Michael Hayden, former head of UStasi (sorry, NSA) wanted to be able to use "aggressive interrogation."
This seems a sad turn for my country, the land that I love. Jefferson is probably rotating at high speed in his tomb.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
If the owner really feels so strongly that the government is committing crimes against the people and infringing on his Constitutional rights then he should grow a pair and show the world exactly what was going on. Yes it will mean sacrifices and will probably mean going to another country first before blowing the whistle. But I guess the big comfy house and fancy car are more important than doing the right thing. Because if people just meekly hide in the shadows and let the government get away with such things then the government will continue to take away your rights and freedoms. People have to start standing up and doing the right thing. But it doesn't require as much courage to sit back, say that the government won't allow you to talk about things, and hope that someone else steps up. I certainly hope that the owner doesn't have children because it's a poor example being set for them.
Disclaimer: I didn't read the article. I call bullshit. If the good ole US of A came knocking on my door threatening me, i'd tell them to stuff it, and alert every major media news outlet in the country to the fiasco. You want my users' info? Sure, get a warrant and get in line pal. Sounds like scaremongering to me. Just wanting to stir up the slashdot crowd. Note that i'm not siding with the government at all, but this scaremongering has to stop if anything is going to get done.
Any Lavabit users (or anyone, really) is welcome to check out https://www.cotse.net/ as an alternative privacy service.
Think of me when you shave your legs...
All these do not have to come to pass if not for that "Human Rights Watch"
They are the one who revealed Snowden's use of Lavabit when they intentionally posted Snowden's message along with his email addy, edsnowden@lavabit.com
The "Human Righs Watch" are helping Uncle Sam more than helping Edward Snowden.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
It's Bush Jr's fault of course. Oh wait, maybe our commander and Chief has finally started to accept his own responsibility in matters (wishful thinking I know I know).
Provide a side door to notification as an API across all these services where on connect your browser can ask "was my information requested or released to the US government?", the usual (or not) answer being "no", while the answer in any other case is "no comment".
If you see "No Comment" make up your own mind.
=)
You claimed that you have just moved to US four months ago, and the other fella, four years.
Both of you are so gung ho on the States.
If neither of you are trolls, good for you !
I came from China. In the 1960's I swam to Hong Kong, soldiers were shooting at us back then.
Via Europe I ended up in the Unted States of America in the late 1960's.
When I first landed there, indeed, the States was SUPER WONDERFUL, there were democracy, there were human rights, there were freedom, and people can demonstrate on the street.
It was indeed a very stunning experience for people like me from a communist country.
My happiness in America lasted about 10 years, and then it gradually faded.
Not that I got tired of America, but as I stayed longer there, I get to know America more.
The more I know, the more I understand that the so-called "Freedom", "Democracy", "Human Rights" are mere slogans - as the government of the United States of America does not care one way or another about these things.
The people of America are great, though. But my American Dream was thoroughly disillusioned by the time of Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
By then, America was no longer practice the same thing it preached, and the American press was no longer upholding the same standard as their predecessors in the 1960's and 1970's.
I finally got out of America, back to Asia (but not back to China) in year 2003.
I've had enough of the hypocrisy.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I suggest you really get up to speed on "conspiracy theories".. I quote those words because it's basically all fact. It's governmental dis-info types that like to toss those words around.
Sorry to hear about your mail though. Running your own mail server seems to be the only solution to all of this madness
oh and 9/11 was an inside job
I wish the damned terrorists were smarter. If terrorists were smart, they would use effective crypto, stego, and physical dead drops to avoid such pedestrian techniques as packet sniffing and disk imaging.
Oh wait. Maybe the terrorists are smart? Maybe they noticed that the IRS is funneling all that money to the NSA, and the best way to terrorize the Americans is to turn all that power back into itself, like some sort of uber idea cooked up by Captain Kirk to save the Enterprise from aliens.
So they use plain text on purpose, so the NSA will do their dirty work for them.
Or it's a false flag and the whole thing makes the X files look pretty real.
Many thanks for your thoughtful post. Yes, people need to take this stuff seriously. The problem, of course, is that the vast majority are not even aware of the problem. "Look, Nascar this afternoon!".
Snowdon's single biggest impact is that he has made more people aware of the issues.
In the meantime, the practical solution is for everyone - most especially US citizens - to start using services based in other countries. If this trend really gets started, it will have a real effect on several large US companies, and they have the pocketbooks to make their displeasure known in Washington.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
"...I'm planning to do a cross-country trip quite soon with a car..."
Just a bit of advice I got from my sister this March after she and her husband drove from Boulder, CO to Decatur, IL:
"Never accidentally drive across Kansas. It's surprisingly wide."
" Congress does not have the authority to violate the Constitution. " no but they can get away with it, if they put you in prison for treason or violating some security letter, and your appeal (made harder by the inability of fully communicate all evidence due to security reason) will take years, maybe a decade or two. Your life will be ruined and don't expect any meaningful compensation. It takes somebody insanely courageous to try to go for that. And your governement (and probably mine) can so get away with trampling and pissing on our respective constitution.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Not trolling jsut asking. From my unschooled eye, the repucrate and democain absically do a very similar politic : screw the lower and middle class, and suck the dick of their corporate master. Now from time to time they both do something which looks like they are doing their electoral promise, like obamacare, but in the long run the most important stuff, like first amendement , fourth amendement , are trampled.
Britain is still a lovely, free country but could be a full-blown police state within a couple of years thanks to the decimation of our constitution by Blair & Brown.
With the Liberal Democrats having made very little progress in restoring our rights and checks & balances on govt, I fear for the future.
Also, the UK is almost impossible to migrate to now, unless you're an EU citizen.
It is probably too late. The demand has already been issued.
He cannot destroy anything, it has already been demanded by the feds and destroying it after it is requested will land him in jail.
I'd like to hear more opinions on this.
It seems Lavabit didn't even email their own customers to tell them they shut down. This would be an astonishingly bad bit of customer service -- unless of course it was protecting a customer (let's call him Edward).
Is it possible that the FISA warrant was issued against the company and not the owners, and so the only legal way to get out of it was to dissolve the company and destroy the servers?
Good post btw.
There's nothing stopping the Government from knocking on your door in Worcester Massachusetts and demanding you let them spy on email users. That's the whole reason Lavabit went down, refusing to do that.
All oaths to defend the Constitution went out the window on March 1,1954 when the first H-bomb was detonated.
"Survival cancels out programming!"
Pretending to believe that nothing trumps the Constitution is like trying to ignore a missing wheel on your car.
Insisting that all government national security issues can be elevated to a level that trumps the Constitution is the real argument in this debate.
might makes right.
congress will do what it's forced to do, by
NSA/lobbyists/bankers/corporations
or
citizens
money / power vs. citizens
its' upto everyone to do their best according to their intelligence. therefore, there is no need to worry. except do your best according to your intelligence. american history proves the power of standing up for your rights. there IS hope if people are awake. the question is are they?
This is worse than it looks..
First the secret courts were there to 'get terrorists'.
1)Snowdon hasn't threatened to blow up or destroy anything.
2)Snowdon is an American citizen
They are now using 'secret' courts, 'secret' letters and 'secret spying' to try to catch him / his associates..
America is no longer 'behaving like' a secret police state..
it has now become one, in all bona-fide aspects of the term..
Shame on Bush, Obama, and all others involved in this..
Somebody set up a mass demo in Washington (the 10 million American March?) please..I and my friends would go..
Silent Circle offered phone, video, and text services (Silent Phone and Silent Text) to be completely end-to-end secure with all cryptography done on the clients and their exposure to our data to be nil.
They just wrote in their blog that also closes following Lavabit's shut down to not “be complicit in crimes against the American people.”
more pathetic than a modern day diva wreck, our president: Barrack Obama.
Dear mr. Lavabit, I do not know you, I didn't use your services but as an European (Dutch) citizen I feel obligated to contribute to your legal defense fund. Your grandfathers died on Omaha beach, Dunkirk etc. fighting for our freedom. That same freedom you are loosing very very rapidly. So I have no choice but to do some payback. Hang in there, in the end the good guys always win...
from the ZDNet article on this fiasco:
"In a closing note, Levison offered a warning about anyone doing business with U.S. tech companies:
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."
Amen.
We did it by using gmail instead of using end to end encryption, which in retrospect was absolutely insane.
We did it by voting partisan, by falling for the whole, partisan politics, fake, "lesser of two evils" scam.
We did it by sitting back as the use of security tools to do our jobs became, in the eyes of our government, impetus to surreptitiously monitor us, and became criminalized.
We did it by continuing to patronize companies that cave to unconstitutionally and illegally yield to secret warrants.
And now we're too far into it to do much about it, but try and calmly make excuses for what's happened, least we come off as some sort of whackjob conspiracy theorists.
We did it to ourselves by valuing money, our careers, our own personal security, over our freedom, over our privacy. We've gone to great lengths to redefine what freedom and privacy in the Electronic Age IS. Because, you know, things are so much better now because of the tech we love so much.
We are living in very interesting times, indeed.
Initially yes, but not only did he NOT stop the policies when he got in office, but when they came up for renewal, and all he had to do was NOT sign, and they wouldn't pass, he took the affirmative step of signing for a continuation of the Bush-regime.
Can't he just move operations to Switzerland or any other european country except UK?
Just leave an account of what happened to you in a briefcase in a bus station or rail terminal and someone will let us know what went down.
RTFA you posted.
The article-reading blasphemers will lure you in with a plausible argument, and then slope all slippery, they'll have you linking the story before you can post. Gasp!
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway