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."

Comments

Re: OK.

[ThaumaTechnician]

..and to the dipshit below. It's an obligatory XKCD reference. https://xkcd.com/1022/

Re:First Amendment

[Hatta]

Exactly. Anyone involved in issuing or enforcing this gag order is committing a consipracy against rights, and is a criminal.

Story leaves out important bits

[SailorSpork]

Also from the front page:

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.

Re:Context

[ArsonSmith]

All of what you said would make sense if the evidence was in direct contradiction. Crime rates are not spiking or even raising, but going down significantly over the last 25 years.

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

Re:OK.

[Lanforod]

RTFA you posted. Your statement is wrong. Canadian government organizations, including health care, are not allowed to store any data outside of Canada. It isn't that the health ministry (actually a health organization as per the article) cancelled a service to a US based cloud service, it's that they would never use one, or even consider using one.

Re:Great country you have over there

[OneAhead]

and then turning around and demanding we do something about their stinking shit like Syria.

You know, the international community as a whole typically doesn't ask the US to interfere - it's only the US media and the hawkish right that would have you believe so. Sure, in every conflict, there will always be someone asking the US for help - often both sides in fact. If you're in a fight, it just seems logical to kindly ask the trigger-happy 100-pound gorilla to help you. If the US wants to fight at any side in any conflict, it can pick freely whose call for help to answer. But the international community, represented by the UN of which you have such a low opinion? In a large percentage of the last 30 years' conflicts, they've been trying to stop the US from going in with guns a blazin' because that would ruin diplomatic efforts. A particularly striking example was when it didn't buy the false WMD evidence against Saddam. That's when the public opinion in the US turned against UN (and France, to distract from the fact that a majority of the western European countries were opposed). So ironically, you're hating the UN for trying to stop the US from fighting other people's wars. You'd better direct your hate at those Americans who have been misleading you into thinking everyone is constantly asking the US to fight their wars, while people in the rest of the world were scratching their heads and asking "why do these yanks insist on being involved in every spark of conflict that arises?"

Re:Great country you have over there

[AK Marc]

I moved out 4 years ago, 1 more year until I'm a dual-citizen. What languages do you speak? Any places you'd like to go? The people I know who moved because they wanted to get away all ended up hating it. It works much better to actually want to go somewhere. If you are worried about jobs, start looking on international job boards and see where the jobs are. You can even apply to some when you aren't residents. Most will ignore you, but some will consider helping you get residency.

Go someplace where you speak the language. I'd consider the UK, even though I wouldn't really want to live there. I could put up with it for 5 or 10 years to get citizenship, then you can go anywhere in the EU. But I'm happy where I ended up, though I may look into EU once I get my dual citizenship.

Re:Great country you have over there

[SplatMan_DK]

"Did you read what I said? I didn't advocate the UK as a better place, but as a convenient place to get EU citizenship to go to other countries in the EU that are better. "

You could've picked a whole fucking other better country. Like Germany, or Norway.

Except for the rather unfortunate fact that Norway is not a member of the EU?

;-)

- Jesper