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Gov't Accidentally Publishes Target of Lavabit Probe: It's Snowden (arstechnica.com)
AmiMoJo writes: In the summer of 2013, secure e-mail service Lavabit was ordered by a federal judge to provide real-time e-mail monitoring of one of its users. Rather than comply with the order, Levison shut down his entire company. He said what the government was seeking would have endangered the privacy of all of his 410,000 users. Now, what was widely assumed has been confirmed. In documents posted to the federal PACER database this month, the government accidentally left his e-mail, 'Ed_snowden@lavabit.com,' unredacted for all to see.
Apple and these guys telling the government to fuck themselves.
The US electorate going apeshit.
It's like we're in a cold revolution!
I guess it is nice that the government accidentally confirmed the obvious, but it's not much of a news story.
I read the internet for the articles.
was it an accident? Or was it hate for the in charge?
no accident. The government intended people to know that they'll shut down any service if you piss them off enough.
-memnock
It would seem to me that someone who seemed so paranoid (rightfully so) would use a pseudonym or alias of some sort.
...yeah, I'll bet.
The guy hasn't done anything wrong, yet lost his business due to governmental pressure.
The government (which in effect means the taxpayers) should compensate this man for the loss of his business. He had the personal integrity to stand up for his users even at great personal cost to himself. If our society shits on people like that, while the ones who succeed are people like this, then I think we've lost the plot. Our society is rotten to the core.
We need to start treating people like Snowden (or apparently this Levison chap) with respect for their service to the public, and punishing the people who are responsible for the wrong doings to begin with, rather than punishing the whistleblowers.
Yes, the money to compensate him for the loss of his business comes out of taxpayer coffers, but it's lost in the noise of graft and corruption losses, and anyway, we, the taxpayers, elected the clowns that caused the problem, so it's really our fault in the end.
. . . .Top men, I tell you. . . . (grin)
Mind you, even a layman can see what a clown car it usually is. . . . The fact that MOST of the evidence that Snowden was the target was redacted, probably got some Fed promoted to GS-15, and a nice performance bonus.
And now that this has shown up, expect further FOIAs to be blocked and delayed even more than they already are. Yelling 'ha ha' at the government is never good for the people.
as subject
Where were all the conservatives who complain about government regulation strangling businesses when government regulations strangled Lavabit?
Except it is not, what Mr. Trump has said. Interestingly, the article you linked to, while quoting rebuttals, does not offer the actual quote from Trump — a sure sign, they are attacking a strawman. That alone should tell you, you are being deliberately misinformed (also known as "lied to").
I'll leave finding the actual text to you as an exercise. I've watched the debate live myself, so I don't need it regurgitated to me by moronic journalists.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yeah, all of this could've been avoided if he just used Not_Ed_Snowden@lavabit.com
Does any one really believe that Edward Snowdens email address is 'Ed_snowden@lavabit.com' ?
The worst part is that shit like this is no longer surprising or noteworthy.
There was a time when a revelation like this would have been major news, all the papers and news stations would have had a field day with it, and heads would have rolled. Now there's barely the merest hint of interest, and not a shred of outrage.
The public has been thoroughly desensitized to what should be seen as egregious and illegal behavior by the government, yet for most people it's basically a snoozefest.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I, for one, do not find this surprising.
What I'd like to know is whether or not they have done this for anyone else.
Hopefully, no one, but I would not be surprised if the Government hasn't done this many times.....
The extent of the covert operations in this country is apalling, and needs to be stopped.
Unless, of course, the same is also done to our leaders. Find every bit of dirt on them and publicize it all....
What's good for the goose...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you had actually been offered and taken the job and worked there, then you would know how wrong almost all of what you said is.
He was an IT contractor who used social engineering to get the keys to the kingdom.
IT implies access to everything. It's kinda required to do the job.
Showing once again that the federal government can keep a secret about as well as a kindergartener.
I thought the point of lavabit was some anonymity.. why use his name in the email address? Willing to email as himself just didn't want others reading what he was sending I guess?
Personally I would have chosen MrNSAAsshat@lavabit.com
This is something I see more and more. If you don't believe in a specific viewpoint (typically the "progressive" far left view), and try to defend your belief, you can only be a SJW. If you want to discuss or have dialogue, you are one of "those" and must be silenced. Not the way the world should work, but take a peek at a College campus today. I have a kid that goes to College and numerous campuses are pretty much the same.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Has anyone considered the possibility that the government long had a back-door provided by Apple, and is now trying to save the day by claiming all terrorists can safely go to apple smart phones for their communication since its not possible to "crack" the code?
They are simply "Herding" the animals towards the controlled choke point (Proprietary, encrypted system) to make it easier to tap into "Interesting" data.
Simply because we are all aware now that they are the "bad" guys and everyone is Keenly aware that Microsoft is spying on everyone as is Google and all other big outfits from the U.S. forcibly controlled by the U.S. Secret courts and National security letters etc..
I rarely have seen more gullible idiots than those paying attention to "The News" from major media. You guys are not too bright. Time to wake up and smell the coffee!
There's no cold revolution in this article. Quite the opposite.
The Feds are letting apple know that they have shut businesses down before and don't plan to flinch.
Think about it. If Snowden was the focus of the investigation then they would know every document that had snow dens name and they'd specifically know the leaked one.
Either that or the lava it backside was about general access not just Snowden.
Either way it points firmly at Apple.
And begins his extermination process. Then people might finally care when a military type shows up at your door wanting you to go to camp :)
What could possibly go wrong?
If in doubt, research Alan Turing, what he did, how his team basically won WWII by besting enigma.
Some years ago, people made fun of federal munitions export restrictions by printing simple encryption/decryption code on Tshirts. We were the enlightened, chuckling at how darn near impossible it would be to truly ensure encryption technologies didn't spread around like wildfire.
Crypto DID spread like wildfire - the federal government's regulations couldn't stop it. Good encryption's everywhere now. (well, relatively good, mostly unbroken, but you never know what some genius will figure out tomorrow)
Guns are everywhere too. Just as the law reasonably disallows individuals from waving around munitions and discharging them and such in public - it can disallow individuals from abusing wartime-level encryption. Just as arms vendors are regulated (albiet somewhat poorly) - encryption providers may very well be regulated at some point.
As best I understand the law, in the U.S. you do not have the right to board an international flight carrying a device with military-grade encrypted data on it. It's hard, darn near impossible, for them to be able to assess this - but it doesn't mean you're not doing something illegal if you do it.
Pure and simple - the fact that the data was encrypted at a given strength makes you dangerous. You become a criminal, because of what you are doing and how you are using technology.
This is not new, nor is it anything to get outraged about. It's simply something you need to know, about the technology you're using. Just as you're not free to drive your car around in any manner you wish (over curbs, running lights, hitting people/things), you're not free to abuse encryption technology in various ways either. Get used to it.
-PBR
I'm pretty sure the beloved PJ shut down the Internet's best web site Groklaw after what happened to Lavabit.
So, there's more collateral damage right there.
Oh, how I miss Groklaw. PJ, I'd buy you a million red dresses if I could.
https://twitter.com/notapolice...
I guess Apple has an order of magnitude greater amount of resources to fight the US Government. Of course the FBI and prosecutors don't really have a budget as they can spend enough money to put people on the moon to win in courts. The only thing we can do as citizens is to contact our legislators and tell them how we feel about the FBI wasting our money. We can also let them know about Lavabit being taken out of service because of the Governments insistence on getting into it's email system and how we do not want that to happen to Apple.
Paul E. Bahre
if Apple has to Close to refuse what a tsunami there would be!
if that's the only way to say no ? Just Say NO.
my bet is the asshats have too much stock in Apple to let that happen.
Now that they've published Snowden's email in the clear, he's gonna get spammed big time.