

Open letter by Ladar Levison - ikawe
http://lavabit.com/?asdf

======
justin66
This absolutely isn't intended to be victim blaming in the slightest but my
first thought when the story detailing his troubles in the Guardian came out a
few days ago was: _if you 're going to start a service that challenges law
enforcement and the intelligence services, you should really have a competent
lawyer on retainer._

Thinking about it today, it occurs to me that in this day and age pretty much
anybody with 410,000 users should probably have a competent lawyer who
understands their business on retainer. What would be the exceptions to that?

~~~
sumedh
I have no idea about lavabit's financials but maybe they were not making
enough money from the paid accounts. I am assuming a lawyer on retainer would
be very expensive.

~~~
trvz
It made less than 100k USD yearly revenue, paying Levison and a supporter.

~~~
endeavor
That's unfortunate but it's also a bit like saying, "it made less than 100k
USD yearly revenue, they couldn't afford backing up their data." Yeah both a
hard-disk crashing and a legal attack are rare, but in their business they
need to expect that it will happen sooner or later.

------
ipsin
The text is essentially the same as covered by the Guardian here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7774158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7774158)

And tptacek's first comment on that post does a good job of highlighting where
Ladar's narrative cuts across the timeline of what actually happened.

------
Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0
What's happening with lavabit's certs? I'm getting this error from Chrome:

The certificate that Chrome received during this connection attempt has been
revoked. Error type: Key revocation Subject: *.lavabit.com Issuer: Go Daddy
Secure Certification Authority Public key hashes:
sha1//dHxYZfXYW3xW7ib88kHFDNZIAg=
sha256/hnOeP/93cTcwYUvU+lLtm2Jd6SXWLzr+fO0F/Srdw98=
sha1/ui61qD4TI9lTS15lvOejE13QqZY=
sha256/MrZLZnJ6IGPkBm87lYywqu5Xal7O/ZUzmbuIdHMdlYc=
sha1/7uWfHiqlRMPLJUOmmlvUaiW8u44=
sha256/VjLZe/p3W/PJnd6lL8JVNBCGQBZynFLdZSTIqcO0SJ8=

~~~
rosser
Did you even read the error message? They've been revoked.

    
    
      The certificate that Chrome received during this connection attempt has been revoked.
      Error type: Key revocation
      Subject: *.lavabit.com

------
breakall
For those having certificate issues, text of the letter is here:
[http://pastebin.com/hajkxLQs](http://pastebin.com/hajkxLQs)

------
robbiet480
I'm getting a MITM warning from Chrome. At least that's what I think it is?
[http://i.rxt.gd/9Car](http://i.rxt.gd/9Car)

EDIT: Oh, clicking more reveals the error appears because the certificate has
been revoked.

------
Glyptodon
Well, I want to read it, but not badly enough to figure out how to bypass the
certificate issue...

~~~
ngoede
One way is use firefox.

~~~
breakall
I get this when I open that link in Firefox 29.0.1:

    
    
      Secure Connection Failed
    
      An error occurred during a connection to lavabit.com. 
      Peer's Certificate has been revoked. 
      (Error code: sec_error_revoked_certificate)
    
    

And there is no way to override it or make an exception.

------
codeoclock
Can someone who knows how to get around the cert issue please copy and paste
to pastebin or similar?

------
gcb0
why those histories never have the name of the agents, prosecutors, judges,
etc?

~~~
metaphorm
that information is usually suppressed by court order

