Why Lavabit Shut Down

An anonymous reader writes "Ladar Levison, founder of the encrypted email service Lavabit that shut down last year because of friction with U.S. government data requests, has an article at The Guardian where he explains the whole story. He writes, 'My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment on my company's network. ... I had no choice but to consent to the installation of their device, which would hand the U.S. government access to all of the messages – to and from all of my customers – as they traveled between their email accounts other providers on the Internet. But that wasn't enough. The federal agents then claimed that their court order required me to surrender my company's private encryption keys, and I balked. What they said they needed were customer passwords – which were sent securely – so that they could access the plain-text versions of messages from customers using my company's encrypted storage feature. (The government would later claim they only made this demand because of my "noncompliance".) ... What ensued was a flurry of legal proceedings that would last 38 days, ending not only my startup but also destroying, bit by bit, the very principle upon which I founded it – that we all have a right to personal privacy.'"

Comments

USA, the land of freedom

[Jmc23]

Where freedom refers to the the government being free to fuck you over as much as they want!

Re:USA, the land of freedom

[Knightman]

Uhm, you know that US imports most of its consumer goods?

That means that the US also need to export things to have a healthy trade balance, otherwise the economy will go in the crapper (even more so than it is).

The US has been running a trade deficient since 1980's and if foreign countries stop buying US made products it's going to be a huge problem financially. In March the US trade deficit was a staggering $40 billion. See http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade for current and historical data on the US trade.

In other words, saying that "the US is not particularly dependent on foreign trade" is patently wrong.

Re:USA, the land of freedom

[dhammabum]

OK, I'll bite - so just because other countries abuse people's rights, that makes the abuse of the US courts and government OK? The point is: most other countries abusing such rights don't hypocritically pretend to be "the land of the free." Except the UK, of course. Once this may have been true for the US but that time has long gone.

Re:USA, the land of freedom

[rmdingler]

I empathize, nay, am nearly envious of folks who still wear the comforting cloak of naivity, as I did growing up in an earlier American generation.

Political corruption always exists. The extent to which it affects you is parallel to the degree your ruling class is allowed to interfere in your private lives.

Your country's government is not the one of the last high-minded do-gooders the World has to offer.

Re:USA, the land of freedom

[mariox19]

Let me guess...YOU live in the nation with the trustworthy government [...]

What's your point, seriously? Who cares! Look, I'm an American. I really don't give a shit what other countries do, and I don't care if they want to criticize us about this. It's really neither here nor there. Our government is doing something very wrong, something that undermines the whole American Experiment—irrevocably. That's the real topic of conversation here.

Frankly, with the way things are in this country, I hope it begins to pinch our wallets. It's the only way most Americans, from the corporate bigwigs to the politicians to the straphangers and soccer moms in the suburbs, ever take anything seriously. People need to wake up.

Re:USA, the land of freedom

[Tiger Smile]

This is a false argument. If a country is wrong in what it's doing, it's wrong. The US government is wrong in this case. They should have marrowed the search to specific accounts. They wanted to capture all communication, which cannot be justified without false statements. If it's wrong it's wrong, even if the person pointing it out is in a worse situation. People in far worse countries have always looked to the US to set the example. They have just as much right, if not more, to feel let down. We are not the leaders of the free world as much as we are the leaders of the mass spying on the free world.

Re:USA, the land of freedom

[rev0lt]

A Chinese and Russian "Snowden" would have quickly disappeared with nobody knowing or caring.

Or not. That's why you have both chinese and russian dissidents. And USA is the country that went after Assange as a 'traitor', regardless of his nationality. From the other side of the pond, USA does look like a police state straight out of 1984 - not only because of the huge levels of incompetence while monitoring people, but also because of what you just said. The level of brainwash that takes for someone to say "my democratic system is better" when its not actually democratic NOR pluralist is an indoctrinator's dream come true. Have a good look at the Roman empire, and why it has fallen. History has a tendency to repeat itself.

Re:USA, the land of freedom

[jc42]

No, the US isn't problem free, and the Iraq was the stupidest theater of war on record.

Are you sure of that? There's a lot of competition for that title, y'know. Most of the wars in the last couple of decades are serious contenders.

There's yet another one ramping up in the area between Russia and the Black Sea, similar to the American Civil War, but even stupider. In the case of Iraq, Saddam was a seriously evil bastard, with lots of blood on his hands, though of course that didn't come close to justifying what the US did to the Iraqi population (and what Iraqi factions did to each other), so it's pretty far up there on the stupid-meter. But do a bit of reading about the recent history in, say, Rwanda or Kosovo or Cambodia, if you want to see some really over-the-top stupid slaughter of civilian populations for no discernible reason other than the insightful word "theater".

You can also (re-)read Jonathan Swift's tale of Gulliver's Travels, especially the section about the war between the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians, for a good explanation of how such wars get started.

Re:USA, the land of freedom

[meerling]

Not really. He is using a unique pseudonym, so his written statements and reputation can be tracked.
If a criminal investigation in necessitated, it's pretty easy to find out who the real person is that uses that pseudonym.

He's not "hiding behind a pseudonym", rather he is using it to create his own identity in the slashdot community while putting enough separation between himself and those things outside of slashdot that each must be judged on it's own merits, and he won't have his boss breathing down his neck if his opinions differ from those of management.

You on the other hand...

Re:Why not leave?

[houstonbofh]

I don't suppose they've considered locating a new service outside the US? The sad truth is that anybody who's looking to run a private service needs to look outside of the US.

It doesn't help. Just ask Kim Dotcom about Megaupload... Right now, none of the Internet is "free" and it will take some major changes to make it so.

Tremendous Respect

[Phrogman]

for this guy who was willing to shut down his business rather than betray his principles and his customers. Note that the government doesn't appear to have wanted the passwords and encryption keys for specific individuals, they wanted the whole fucking lot.

I guess "Don't Tread on Me!" has been transformed to "Go Ahead and Trample Me!" :P

Re:Tremendous Respect

[sjames]

Did you read TFA at all? They were supposed to look at just one user's metadata but tried to expand it to cover all users data and metadata so they could have themselves a nice fishing expedition.

He didn't refuse to comply, he just needed some time to get advice on what he ACTUALLY had to do to comply. Being stuck under a gag order certainly didn't speed up that process. The feds were mad because when they said jump, he didn't salute and ask how high before the echo of their words faded.

Re:Tremendous Respect

[clarkkent09]

This is a better article than Guardian crap: http://www.wired.com/2013/10/l...

- June 28 - warrant for metadata for one user
- Lavabit fails to comply
- July 16 - warant for SSL keys
- Lavabit freaks out and still refuses to comply
- August 5 court threatens contempt and $5,000/day fine and Lavabit shuts down

Not making a comment on who is right. It's just misleading to ignore the first part hence you've been mislead.

Re:Tremendous Respect

[vux984]

The truth behind the story is [...]

That a small business owner is ill-equipped to deal with the weight of the federal government coming down on him.

We learned that you can't go from nothing to fighting the FBI and NSA on constitutional grounds in the space of a few days. You won't even FIND a lawyer able to take up your case; nevermind be able to bring him up to speed, and get him the evidence you need, and have him prepare an actual defense for you; especially when everything is under seal, and secret gag orders.

He refused to comply with a court order and provide the metadata (email headers, not the body) after which the prosecutors obtained a warrant for SLL keys.

His version of the story contradicts that claim. I doubt you have authoritative inside knowledge as to the truth here.

Warrants for email headers are commonly obtained in criminal investigations and its not unusual or surprising that they wanted Snowden's as he is a subject of federal investigation for multiple serious crimes.

Have you read the warrant? Some how I doubt it. Because he's claiming they wanted a lot more than that.

The general consensus is that he handled his defense poorly, and as a result made things worse for himself. What this interview shone the spotlight on is that his 'poor handling' of his defense was, in many respects, entirely beyond his control -- trapped between tight deadlines, restrictive sealed gag orders, being a '3rd party' to the actual case instead of an actual defendant, and not having a lawyer already lined up and primed meant that he was effectively denied justice by these process constraints put on him.

I think he makes a good care here.

Re:Tremendous Respect

[Tiger Smile]

It's far more clever than that. Normally the small business owner can appeal for help and fight. This is something that works for the public good to keep goernment in check, but they made even asking for help impossible. 1st rule of FISA Club is you don't talk about FISA Club. The act of mearly asking for help would land a person in prison.

Re:Paging Oslo

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like they really had that much credibility to begin with. They gave the peace prize to Kissinger as well.

Good job capturing the "steamroller effect"

[TFoo]

I think this is an important article because he does a good job of showing how the govt bullies people around -- and illuminating precisely why governmental power NEEDS checks and balances, like a functioning (not rubber-stamp) court and warrant system.

Substitute "China" or "Soviet Russia"

[kheldan]

You could change a few words in this story and make it about something that happened in China or Soviet Russia or any other oppressive nation on Earth, past or present, and it would be plausible.

I've said it before: The United States that I thought I grew up in? It wasn't real; it was a fantasy, a lie. THIS is the reality, and it's a goddamned depressing one. 'Secure in your person and papers', indeed. When was the last time those words actually meant something? Did they ever mean anything?

Re:Substitute "China" or "Soviet Russia"

[log0n]

Completely agree. I'll quote myself for no other reason than I just 90sec ago stated the same thing earlier and you completely encapsulated how I feel. I have a feeling that there are quite a lot of us like this.

"We expect it from China because they are [more or less] (not us, so therefore) a potential enemy, like Russia, like latest Islamatyrant, blah blah.

(going US centric) We were raised to believe that the US was better than what we're finding out it's doing. We were taught to believe we are a shining beacon of freedom, democracy, that our way is the best way - or at least it's the best way done so far - because look at all of the failings we see around us.. we take the moral highground making us better than the tyrants who do the stuff that we despise, etc.

There are a lot of Snowdens out there.. not necessarily in what power or knowledge we have, but that those of us that feel everything instilled in us about our nation's greatness is turning out to be complete bullshit."

Re:Why not leave?

[PPH]

I would have made a constitutional argument in court

Good luck rounding up legal representation from a cell in Gitmo. Any attempt to make a legal argument around the details of NSA's request would have them shut down as hindering national security. Push the issue and you're a terrorist and off to a little resort in the Caribbean for you.

Re:Why not leave?

[Anonymous Coward]

The third amendment forbids quartering of troops in peacetime without consent. I'd argue that the there is no distinction between monitoring equipment and troops. Troops don't have to be human. We may one day have a droid army, so is the government free to post one in each business to monitor its activity?

Re:Why not leave?

[rogoshen1]

You just gave an NSA agent a surprise erection.

Re:Brought it on himself

[Anonymous Coward]

How does his noncompliance give the government the right to invade the privacy of a large number of 3rd parties.

Sounds more like they wanted him to resist so they would have an excuse.

Re:Why not leave?

[Sabriel]

Given the stakes that would be required to just get to the point where you're making that argument in front of a federal judge, I'd hope that judge would have more intelligence than to respond in the manner you suggest.

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) included the Third in its majority decision as implying a belief that a home should be free from agents of the state, so precedent does exist. And in this modern age where agents of the state can be "present" in your homes 24/7 via electronic means, what exactly does "quartered" now encompass?

It's called the tenth amendment.

[tlambert]

Can someone please point me to the alleged Right to Privacy in the Constitution, because I don't see one.

There is no prohibition against government infringing upon a hypothetical right to privacy, and certainly no expectation of privacy exists for anything transmitted over the Internet, which was created and built with government money.

It's called the tenth amendment.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Since there's not a specific right to invade privacy granted to the Fed, there is therefore a right to privacy.

Re:It's called the tenth amendment.

[Kaenneth]

From Wikipedia:

For many years, the English government had used a "general warrant" to enforce its laws. These warrants were broad in nature and did not have specifics as to why they were issued or what the arrest was being made for. A general warrant placed almost no limitations on the search or arresting authority of a soldier or sheriff. This concept had become a serious problem when those in power issued general warrants to have their enemies arrested when no wrongdoing had been done. During the mid-18th century, the English government outlawed all general warrants. This study of the history of England made the American Founding Fathers ensure that general warrants would be illegal in the United States as well when the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1791.