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Snowden Finally Identified As Target of Investigation That Ended Lavabit (washingtontimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Times: Three years after a government investigation forced the shuttering of Lavabit, a Texas-based email provider, its CEO revealed Friday that an account belonging to Edward Snowden spurred the probe that put his company out of business. "Ladar Levison shut down his encrypted webmail service in August 2013 amid an FBI investigation focused on one of his company's nearly half-a-million customers," reports The Washington Times. "A gag-order that has just recently been vacated in federal has legally prevented him up until now from confirming the account in question was registered to none other than the NSA contractor attributed with one of the largest intelligence leaks in U.S. history. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton nullified the mandatory non-disclosure orders in a June 13 court filing that went unnoticed until Lavabit released a statement Friday. Officially, the consent order approved by Judge Hilton in the Eastern District of Virginia earlier this month removes all gag-orders concerning Lavabit and Mr. Levison with regards to a grand jury investigation that led the FBI to Mr. Snowdenâ(TM)s email account. 'While Iâ(TM)m pleased that I can finally speak freely about the target of the investigation, I also know the fight to protect our collective freedom is far from over,' Mr. Levison said in a statement. He said he plans to discuss the case further during the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas this summer."
i won't believe our justice system holds any actual justice until these individuals are arrested and taken to court for wilful violation of their oaths of office and for violating the 4th amendment rights of 300 million US citizens (and the civil rights of innocent people all around the world):
James Clapper
Dianne Feinstein
Keith Alexander
Mike Rogers
George W Bush
Barack Obama
There are probably others too, but at least those people. It shouldn't be a witch-hunt. They deserve the presumption of innocence, due process, and to be tried by a jury of their peers the same as anyone does. Still, there is plenty of reasonable cause for them to stand trial.
If we are not willing to do this, then our society has devolved into "laws for thee but not for me". If that's what we want, then fine, but let's make it official, and write it into our legal system that high ranking party officials are considered to be above the law. Let's pass a new constitutional amendment to that effect: we no longer want government officials to be subject to the law. And let's repeal the 4th, which we can do with a 2/3 majority of states voting for that. It would at least be honest.