
Email service used by Snowden shuts down, warns against using US-based companies - weu
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/09/lavabit-shutdown-snowden-silicon-valley
======
spodek
"Can we call it a police state now?"

I saw the question on Reddit after a different revelation last month. I feel
like we're going to ask that question more and more.

I can only hope more and more of us are inspired, as Snowden was by Levinson
(Lavabit's CEO) and many of us have been by both of them, and we act to
protect ourselves and constrain our governments from overreaching to where
they can't help repeating the disasters of previous overreaching governments.

~~~
criley2
My reply on Reddit when I see people bring that up is simple:

You insult people who have experienced a police state by calling what we are
experiencing a police state.

A police state has no distinction between legislation and executive.

Our legislation is currently investigating the president for: * CIA coverup of
the attack on our Benghazi consulate' * IRS targeting of political opposition

They're planning on using their primary power, the power over our nations
money, to enforce not only strict budget cuts, but requiring that the
President's signature legislative victory be repealed.

That's before we discuss the court and how they've treated the President.
Remember when they threw out his NLRB nominations as unconstitutional?

Now someone will bring up spying, but I urge you to realize that Congressional
distaste for spying is centralized among the less important Congresspeople.
Our leadership on both sides of the aisle is largely supportive of the
infrastructure, seeing as they wrote and passed all of the laws that make it
possibly. That's not an executive behaving without regard to legislation, it's
one working with them.

I don't see a police state, and I think being cavalier with terminology does a
grave injustice to lessons of the past and the people who have experienced
(and are experiencing) a totalitarian government with truly no checks and
balances.

~~~
RyanZAG
I agree with you in that a key difference would be if people were held
accountable for illegal acts. However, simply investigating the president is
not enough - it would actually need to be possible for him to be accused and
held liable.

An investigation in which the conclusion is already obvious and no one will be
held accountable is not really an investigation, it is only smoke and mirrors.
Throwing out one set of nominations as unconstitutional among hundreds is the
same smoke and mirrors.

The ability to create a public drama while the real decisions occur underneath
is certainly no proof of the lack of totalitarian government. Not that I'd say
the USA is a totalitarian government, just that your proof is very shaky.

~~~
twoodfin
Why are you so sure these programs are illegal? Might it be possible that you
find them distasteful, but that under our current Constitutional and legal
regime, there's nothing for anyone to be "held accountable" for?

~~~
mcv
On the subject of whether it's a police state, illegality is irrelevant. If
the law makes it a police state, it's still a police state.

~~~
twoodfin
But that's not the point to which I replied:

 _I agree with you in that a key difference would be if people were held
accountable for illegal acts._

If you think the law makes it a police state, then argue about the law, but
RyanZAG was suggesting that some evidence of a police state is that laws meant
to restrain the government are not being enforced.

------
ck2
How is it possible for Snowden to be inspired any further?

He sacrified his life for us. He is the inspiration.

Certainly no president in the next few terms will rest until he is rendered,
he has to look over his shoulder now forever.

Thank you for your sacrifice Mr. Snowden.

~~~
pearjuice
Sacrified his life? Please stop. He merely leaked classified data and sold
pieces of it here and there. He is basically living the life of a celebrity
right now yet dramafies his existence.

~~~
jusben1369
HN folks. I think ck2's response and pearjuice's response are both inaccurate
as they represent an extreme view. It might be useful to read about
celebratory and the attractions and psyche of those that are drawn to it. Many
of you here share Snowden's feelings but none of you did what he did. Was it
simply his sense of justice that made him do this? Or something more? If he'd
stayed in the US and immediately faced the music it would be much more
apparent that he's a true hero willing to sacrifice everything for his
beliefs. Once he plotted the whole thing and moved to a safe place before
releasing it and has looked to avoid any punishment for his actions by trying
to get to or stay in safe countries it's apparent that it's not a black and
white case. So I don't understand why ck2's kind of dreamy eyed quote is
treated differently to anovikov and pearjuice who are in downvote hell. The
answer is Snowden is neither hero nor vilan.

~~~
ck2
I don't worship Snowden at all or see him as celebrity. If anything I wish
there was 100% more attention on the information he brought to light instead
of him.

I merely recognize his extreme sacrifice and thank him for it.

If we are supposed to thank the people who ran and signed up for the military
to invade Iraq and empowered the insanity of the last administration, we most
certainly can thank Snowden for showing us that not only has the insanity not
stopped, it may have gotten far worse.

~~~
jusben1369
Well ck2 it certainly reads like something close to worship. "How is it
possible for him to be inspired any further?" "Sacrificed his life" "He can't
be inspired, he is the inspirer" That's pretty strong stuff.

------
jedbrown
CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, 1994) addresses
real-time monitoring of the communications of a single person, by way of a
warrant. Lavabit has complied with warrants in the past [1] without shutting
down services. Real-time interception does not fundamentally break Lavabit's
security model [2] of encrypting incoming email and never storing the user's
password, which is required to use their private key when they wish to access
the mail. The implication in this shutdown is that the basic security model
would be compromised, allowing untargeted retroactive snooping without needing
to wait for the user to log in. Such a system is functionally equivalent to
not having server-side encryption at all. Regardless of your stance on
government snooping, this is just bad security, allowing a successful attacker
to take all data in one shot rather than only being able to snoop on users
currently accessing their mail.

[1]
[http://ia600908.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.2362...](http://ia600908.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.236204/gov.uscourts.mdd.236204.docket.html)
[2]
[http://possibility.com/LavabitArchitecture.html](http://possibility.com/LavabitArchitecture.html)

~~~
MWil
Reading this is super interesting...ever heard of a Consent to Assume Online
Identity Form?

------
eliasmacpherson
"Note how a country's human rights problems becomes of interest to the US
political and media class only when that country defies the US"

I am glad Greenwald has cottoned on to this and also made pointed remarks on
the use of the abuses of others to question the ethics of Assange and Snowden
in their "choice" of destination. It's reminiscent of the cold war retort from
the soviets.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes)

------
mtgx
Snowden: "Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our
internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests
the same way".

Indeed, they must. Your move Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple.

~~~
MrKurtz
Shifting the blame and the burden for policy reform onto firms is not only
silly but also unfair, you can't really expect them to shut down, they are not
one man operations like Lavabit.

~~~
greyman
It is not unfair. At least some of them, most notably Google and Facebook,
actively allure their users to share more and more of their private data,
while misleadingly claiming, that they are able to keep them safe. If more and
more people will realize the risks of sharing their personal data with those
companies, it can endanger their whole business model. So who should fight
most vigorously, if not them?

And nobody says they have to immediately shut down.

~~~
MrKurtz
You can't declare that they're not fighting because you have no knowledge of
what is being done by their lawyers and lobbyists, especially since the courts
involved are secret.

Lobbying scales better than shutting down or suspending service.

~~~
craigching
Right, we have no knowledge that they're fighting for us. And until we do, we
put our money where our mouths are, stop using their services until we can be
sure they're honoring our privacy. If anyone is able to fight, it's them, not
the small businesses. So put the burden on them, if they want our data, then
prove they can keep it safe.

------
mhurron
And now we have completed the move to the story is about Snowden.

I wonder what his favorite food is? What is his favorite band? Where is his
favorite place to shop? What does he think of the architecture of St. Basils?

A few more weeks and it will be 'Privacy Expert Snowden says...' and no one
will remember why he's even famous.

~~~
rthomas6
Stop assailing our great leader Snowden Christ.

~~~
thetrumanshow
Hmm... its possible for people to miss even massive changes in culture at the
point of inflection.

I personally felt it this morning when I was getting ready to reply to an
email to a friend with a cold-war joke that in times past I would have never
thought twice about sending. I didn't send.

------
btipling
Kind of sucks for those customers though, who can't get their email out. I get
it, but man I'm glad I didn't use lavabit. The lavabit founder is probably
going to have to deal with some serious civil legal problems, and maybe even
criminal ones too.

I don't know where I stand on this. I feel like the NSA can't respond because
they're trapped by the same secrecy that they operate in from speaking out,
although the lies and backtracking don't help, so this echo chamber is just
amplifying itself to the point people are making big bold moves that hurt
themselves (and their customers) when anyone has yet to demonstrate a single
instance of where the NSA has misused their information (if you don't assume
the DEA parallel reconstruction is using NSA data, which is maybe speculative
or not).

Well at least Obama is meeting with Tim Cook about this, because that makes
sense. I've been thinking, why doesn't Tim Cook go talk to the president about
this. Because...yeah.

------
jusben1369
Help me with this. A) I'm a non dev and b) I'm trying to cut to the chase vs
use inflamed terms like Freedom of Speech and Police State. I'm piecing this
together from the few comments I see that trying and get to the core of the
issue.

i) Lavabit's provided a communication service (email) that was uniquely
designed so as the content's literally did not touch their servers. Therefore,
if the NSA came to them wanting to look at communications by their users they
would literally be told "It's impossible to do that" ii) NSA (or government in
general) says "We cannot allow you to have a service that is completely
untraceable. You need to begin having a way to trace this. iii) Lavabit's
understands that this is their commercial value proposition. Should they be
forced to do this they literally go out of business. iv) They fight it hard
for a while but realize it's futile so shut up shop vs slowly go out of
business.

Is that right?

As a side note I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the Greenwald/Snowden circular
loop. It's very close to a propaganda loop and not all that different to other
media outlets who get two like minded people and thus really just have a
mutually agreeable conversation vs a reporting role. The danger being of
course it's passed off as news by being positioned as such.

~~~
dmix
> that was uniquely designed so as the content's literally did not touch their
> servers

It only touched their servers in encrypted form, never plaintext.

They would have had to wiretap their customer to retrieve content (for
example, client side JS monitoring the next time the user accessed their email
on the server) since all email was encrypted on the server harddrives and only
accessible via the user.

Instead if it wasn't encrypted they could have used a normal search warrant
which would have given the police access to the plaintext content immediately.

What was unique about Lavabit is that they never had the ability to decrypt
the content without involving the user, since they never had the "private
key".

------
grandalf
This is the kind of scenario one would expect to find if encryption were
introduced into a totalitarian society.

------
cbhl
I know we all trust pg and all... but are there non-US-based alternatives to
Hacker News that we should be considering?

------
k-mcgrady
I'd love to know what the consequences of making public these secret court
orders and trials. One company standing up to the government and making public
the actual content and threats could make a big difference.

------
coldcode
Yet a "safe" email system is now gone. A better idea would be to move yourself
and your encrypted email company to a country that will let you keep providing
such a useful service (assuming there is one).

~~~
conductor
Email is not safe, by design. Even if you do encrypt the contents using PGP or
GPG, the headers are too much exposure. They will know who when and with whom
you correspond, and all the hosts the mail passed through (if you are not
using anonymous re-mailers). The current implementation of email is "defective
by design". But _there_are_ alternatives [1], you must just start using them.

[1] RetroShare, BitMessage, I2P Bote, Freenet + Frost and some others, which
haven't tried yet.

~~~
maxerickson
It might sound odd, but I think an easier solution is to commit to being
persecuted by the tyranny. The alternatives are to prevent it or live under
it, committing to the persecution should encourage prevention.

~~~
budgi3
I don't understand.

~~~
maxerickson
A robust and open society is a better weapon against tyranny than a well
managed public profile.

------
jokoon
The darker side of this, they can't speak about it because of state secrets,
and any other individuals involved in other stuff has to deal with the same
problem.

I'd think, people would end up speaking out when they're threatened by the NSA
to shut up, but they have nowhere to go for legal advice.

I wonder if the government or the NSA could manage to shut down a class action
if there would be one.

------
MWil
Why is Lavabit, based out of Texas, appealing in the Fourth Circuit (Maryland,
West VA, Virginia, North and South Carolina)?

~~~
dspillett
Same reason more patent cases are taken to east Texas: some states seem more
favourable than others to certain parties in certain types of case.

~~~
MWil
Patent cases are civil, you can absolutely choose where you want to go,
correct. I can't imagine the same is true for which jurisdiction the
government uses in handing down a NSL...as I type this I wonder if it came out
of Maryland though...

------
wil421
Now that we are seeing more and more publicity surrounding this issue and
companies are at least attempting to be transparent, how can we spark a
fundamental change in the way the Govt sees this issue.

The public need to hold these people accountable in some fashion, criminally
is probably out of the question. Whether it be by some investigation committee
by congress, supreme court intervention, or simply voting the current
incumbents out.

We need to stop the Govt from just abiding by the letter of the laws and not
by going with the Spirit of the law. The Government shouldnt be finding loop
holes in their laws or playing games about the meaning of words when the are
questioned by officials.

------
quantumpotato_
What's up with all of these news articles where person A thinks topic B is
word "C", in quotes? Maybe I'm missing something, but just throwing words onto
events and calling it news looks like unthoughtful neurolinguistic
programming. "this thing is called 'horrifying'". Often the articles don't
declare the subject, so we just see that an invisible someone has done
something. Sort of like "Wall graffitied with "$GANGTAG" sign". Off topic, I
know. Just having a tough time grappling with news articles titled like this..

------
susi22
This blew up more than I expected. It is the front page story now of Spiegel
Online (one of the top German newspapers).

