ACLU: Lavabit Was 'Fatally Undermined' By Demands For Encryption Keys

An anonymous reader writes "When encrypted email provider Lavabit shut down in August, it was because U.S. authorities demanded the company release encryption keys to get access to certain accounts. Lavabit's founder, Ladar Levison, is facing contempt of court charges for his refusal to acquiesce to their demands. But now the ACLU has filed a 'friend of the court' brief (PDF) in support of Levison, saying that the government's demand 'fatally undermined' the secure email service. 'Lavabit's business was predicated on offering a secure email service, and no company could possible tell its clients that it offers a secure service if its keys have been handed over to the government.' The ACLU added, 'The district court's contempt holding should be reversed, because the underlying orders requiring Lavabit to disclose its private keys imposed an unreasonable burden on the company. Although innocent third parties have a duty to assist law enforcement agents in their investigations, they also have a right not to be compelled "to render assistance without limitation regardless of the burden involved."' Lavabit is also defending itself by claiming a violation of the 4th amendment has occurred."

Comments

duty to assist law enforcement agents??

[fustakrakich]

Fuck that! I have no such obligation

Re:duty to assist law enforcement agents??

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Corporations are voluntary associations of people who do not give up their rights associating that way.

Re:duty to assist law enforcement agents??

[msauve]

You don't when that warrant is ethically and Constitutionally wrong, doubly so when it infringes on the rights of innocent others. Just because the Emperor says he's wearing clothes, doesn't make it so.

Sure, they'll get pissed and come at you - but that doesn't change the fact that it's the right thing to do.

Re:duty to assist law enforcement agents??

[epyT-R]

The due process involved in getting a valid warrant has been stripped of most of its teeth.. Cops can now get warrants over the phone in a matter of minutes. This should not be, but that's how it is now. As a result, a warrant is no longer a guarantee that law enforcement has done any legwork before hassling anyone. Effectively, we are now all guilty until proven innocent.

Re:duty to assist law enforcement agents??

[msauve]

I disagree. Corporations gain special tax and liability advantages - requiring them to give up rights is a a reasonable cost for that. That in no way prevents people from associating in other ways which lack such legal advantages while retaining their rights.

Re:duty to assist law enforcement agents??

[icebike]

You do when they have a warrant.

Well that is the issue being contested here, so you can't say for certain that a warrant is sufficient.

The government may get a warrant for the contents of one safe-deposit box, but they don't have
the right to a warrant for the combination to the bank's vault.

The idea that one person must surrender all of his possessions so that law enforcement can capture another person
is what is at issue here.

Re:duty to assist law enforcement agents??

[Jane Q. Public]

"Corporations are voluntary associations of people who do not give up their rights associating that way."

HOWEVER, neither does that association transfer constitutional rights to the corporation. Those rights belong to the INDIVIDUALS that make up the corporation, not to the corporation, which is a "fictitious legal entity".

Hence, a corporation can't vote, for example.

Re:duty to assist law enforcement agents??

[phantomfive]

If a bunch of people get together, they still have the right to freedom of speech. What difference does it make if they collectively get a tax refund?

Re:duty to assist law enforcement agents??

[Jane Q. Public]

"Ah, so you're in favor of muzzling the speech rights of political parties and nonprofit watchdogs?"

No. For the moment let's leave aside Citizens United, which was grossly flawed, and which overturned centuries of precedent in order to reach an absurdly bad conclusion.

Citizens' Unions and political organizations are different from "normal" business corporations, in that they are voluntarily formed for the purpose of furthering a common goal of the members. Often (but not necessarily) a political goal. Therefore, it is valid to say that the organization or corporation represents the interest of all the people involved.

Now take a more "normal" business corporation: not all the people are there for the same reason. Some are CEOs. Some are janitors. Many of them are there for nothing but employment in their particular niche. This is DIFFERENT than the former example, because political money is being spent out of the profits of the corporation (not donations), and the money is spent in a way that only the board or CEO approves. There is nothing in this picture that suggests that the political money the corporation spends even remotely represents "the people" who make up the majority of the corporation. On the contrary, it is easy to see that a CEO might spend the money on lobbying to keep wages low, for example. There is nothing "representative" or "voluntary" about it, on the part of MOST of the people who make up the corporation.

See the difference? SCOTUS erred -- that's putting it extremely mildly -- by not, at the very least, distinguishing between incorporated citizens' organizations, and business corporations. Yet the purposes and consequences are far different.

Re:duty to assist law enforcement agents??

[Jane Q. Public]

It pains me to agree with you but agree with you I must. :) In general, prosecutors in the U.S. have had too much discretionary power. We had problems in my own community with a prosecutor that unquestionably abused his position.

But at the same time, I must also say that a lot of the problem is the laws themselves. Politicians do not want to be perceived as "soft" on crime, so the penalties for transgressions get every tougher, and more and more formerly-frowned-upon behaviors become actually illegal.

This process MUST stop at some point, and be reversed back to the point of sanity. Right now, our legal system is broken.

Re:lavabit should have helped the first time

[shentino]

The argument is that lavabit was asked to sabotage it's prime selling point.

Re:lavabit should have helped the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

A government cheerleader licking the government's boots? Why, who would have thought!?

when the FBI wanted access to only a few accounts. instead they blew them off and brought this on to themselves

Well, that doesn't seem very appropriate. Why is the government focusing on revenge?

Re:lavabit should have helped the first time

[king neckbeard]

Except for the fact that they couldn't do that by virtue of the site's design. As another article explained on /. explained, that design choice was good security practice because the government exploiting you is not any different technologically than any other insider attack. The problem is that the NSA got exposed, and they got pissed. The answer was to nuke the NSA from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Civil disobedience has a cost ...

[perpenso]

You don't when that warrant is ethically and Constitutionally wrong ...

You are mistaken, there is nothing in the Constitution that says you can pick and choose which warrants issued by a valid court you will obey.

What you are thinking of is called "civil disobedience", and civil disobedience often has a cost. Precisely the sort of thing we are seeing with respect to the contempt charge in this case. Civil disobedience is not an end run around the law nor a get out of trouble free card. What it is is a way to preserve your personal sense of ethics and a way to draw attention to and raise public awareness of an unjust law with the goal of amending or repealing the unjust law.