Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Lavabit.com Owner: 'I Could Be Arrested' For Resisting Surveillance Order

Posted by timothy on from the how-can-you-dare-to-say-that dept.

Zak3056 writes "NBC News is reporting that 'The owner of an encrypted email service used by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden said he has been threatened with criminal charges for refusing to comply with a secret surveillance order to turn over information about his customers. "I could be arrested for this action," Ladar Levison told NBC News about his decision to shut down his company, Lavabit LLC, in protest over a secret court order he had received from a federal court that is overseeing the investigation into Snowden.''"

6 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. Just comply with the court order by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's no point to be made from not complying with a legitimate court order. Just comply with it. One day you could be very thankful that we have a legal system that was created to protect us. Please respect that and our fellow citizens.

    1. Re:Just comply with the court order by osu-neko · · Score: 3, Funny

      I didn't go there. Too young I guess. I do remember when you could be arrested for refusing to spy on your fellow citizens in the Soviet Union when asked, so that's where my mind went. There's a difference, of course. That was the KGB, this is the NSA. Not a single letter in common...

      --
      "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
  2. welcome... by wbr1 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
  3. Re:Inevitable consequence of unfettered capitalism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wake up America, or lose everything you care about.

    Oh god, is something going to happen to Game of Thrones?!

  4. Secret court orders, secret trials by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

    All that's missing is establishing a People's Court and we're set.

    (Please read the Wikipedia article before invoking Godwin)

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Re:obama = a more palatable cheney by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Last time I tried to set up outlook for encryption it refused to do anything at all without a certificate (which I assume the Feds have direct access to, especially given the revelations of the last couple of months).

    As illustrated, you don't understand anything about cryptography or certificates. No, the Feds don't magickally have access to something called a "certificate". Yes, you can get a certificate from one of the various root certificate authorities (CA). The CA signs the certificate using a cryptographically secure hash indicating that the certificate does belong to you and has not been altered. The CA does not have access to the private key of the key pair and cannot use the certificate to decrypt or generate hash signatures.

    However, if you insist on being paranoid to the point of not having a functioning brain, you are free to create your own certificate. There are a plethora of tools to do the job. Microsoft provides one as a part of Windows Server and also ships one as a part of the freely downloadable software development kit. There are also countless other free tools on virtually any OS you can think of that can accomplish the same. Your self-signed certificate will work just as well, excepting that by default any OS will not have a method to validate that the certificate should belong to the individual that the certificate claims that it does. Afterall, I could make a self-signed certificate that claims to be Joce640k just as easily as you can. In virtually all software you can override this either directly in the application, or by trusting the certificate in the platform key store.

    Of course, this all has been a waste of time. Facts get in the way of a perfectly unreasonable conspiracy theory.