
Lavabit.com owner: 'I could be arrested' for resisting surveillance order  - ghosh
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/13/20008036-lavabitcom-owner-i-could-be-arrested-for-resisting-surveillance-order?lite
======
AmVess
"Because the government has barred Lavabit from disclosing the nature of its
demands, we still don't know what information the government is seeking, or
why it's seeking it," said Ben Wizner, a national security lawyer for the
ACLU. "It's hard to have a debate about the reasonableness of the government's
actions — or Lavabit's response, for that matter — when we don't know what
we're debating."

So there we have it, a modern-day Geheime Staatspolizei in the USA.

I wonder what lunacy will pop up next.

~~~
marvin
He hasn't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court
order. This case has much higher profile than the CEO who got in trouble a
while ago. Lots of international newspapers have written stories about Lavabit
after the shutdown.

I think if Levison was arreted, it would be a turning point in the political
implications of this case. From the slow response, it seems like the
authorities are worried about doing this. And rightfully so.

~~~
wpietri
_He hasn 't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court
order._

I have to suspect that's because he was willing to shut down his company and
make a big stink. It he hadn't done that, I think it would have been much
easier for the feds to arrest some random guy in a Dallas apartment,
suggesting that he's a nefarious hacker in league with Snowden and possibly
other nefarious people. With 10k users, I'm sure they could find something to
say that there were, say, "suspected drug dealers" using the service.

It was very smart of him to get out front of the story. Now if the Feds go
after him, he's the businessman taking a principled stand.

~~~
joering2
> I have to suspect that's because he was willing to shut down his company and
> make a big stink

Why so many are stuck on the fact he "shut down the company" and did a good
dead. I been downvoted about this before and its fine, I just didnt get my
answer.

The Feds did not ask him to shut down; it wasnt Government mission. Their
mission was to get access to Lavabit data. Said that, regardless if he shut
down or not, Government will or already did get full access to Lavabit data.
Its even worse that they shut down; if they were online you could go and clean
up your mailbox (not necessarily from anything illegal, but for example your
own naked pictures you sent to your wife). But since they are offline, nothing
can be done. Government won.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Shutting down the company alerted users to possible surveillance. Government
wanted to snoop in secret. Now their secret is out, and they may or may not
get to snoop on their target(s) via other channels. Levison loses the proceeds
of his business, but he has behaved ethically by discontinuing his service
since he can no longer deliver what was promised. Levison took the closest
thing he could get to a win.

Levison gets extra karma because he put everyone's interests ahead of his own
short-term financial interests. By shutting his business in the manner that he
did, he has poisoned the well for gov't snooping at other similar services. If
he is lucky, he may suffer little or no further gov't retribution.

------
ds9
Here is my hypothesis of the meaning of this story.

What the government wanted was to trojan the code (collect passwords because
the encryption was based on them), and do so invisibly to the users.

Levison prevented this by shutting down the service - that is the real
offence. The technicality on which he could be arrested is that he indicated
the reason for the shutdown in the message to users on the front page - albeit
only by implication.

The importance of this, which I think that even many techies may be missing,
is that service owners no longer have a choice of what code to run on their
own servers. If you run a service that enables secure communications, you can
be forced to subvert the code to the detriment of users and effeectively lie
about it and deceive the users. You can refuse to participate by quitting the
job (unless the 13th Amendment is also being trampled) - but according to the
new, defacto US policy, you have to allow the service to continue in trojaned
form, otherwise you're subject to prosecution for revealing the government
wiretapping to the targets.

~~~
anologwintermut
Seeing as Lavabit handled encryption and decryption server side, the order
could have required them to retain messages after decryption. Or, less
insidiously, just required them to retain messages they received prior to
encrypting them. In both cases, they wouldn't have forced Lavabit to put in a
backdoor, just keep what they had already. (though if they only stored
decrypted emails in memory, that distinction is small).

Remember, Lavabit voluntarily complied with other court orders, so they likely
have the technical means to comply with what the feds want.

~~~
thecodeore
You have no idea what the feds want, and the previous "comply" was probably
just turning over the information it had readily available including the raw
cipher text which would be useless with out the key

I do not believe for a second the NSA was looking simliar information.

------
jusben1369
Putting aside this story for one minute and looking at the larger picture one
thing I find fascinating is how the protagonists are absolutely winning the PR
battle. The irony here is that when Snowden or this owner go public the overly
secretive government can't or won't reply in an effective manner. That
secrecy, so effective when operating in the dark, is suddenly impotent when
the light is shined on it. The only attempts at any type of rebuttal have come
from Obama and have had little to no effect to change the tidal flow here.

So we just get this one sided narrative with a "fresh" new story every 2 or 3
days. It may be disturbing that he can be arrested but is that really news to
anyone here? What's the point of a surveillance order if you can't back it up?
We lock people up for contempt of court. You have to have a stick if you want
folks to comply. Yet here is this story a few days after the main story and
just as Lavabit was falling off the global media front page. This keeps the
issue alive and hammers the government again. All trademarks of an excellent
PR campaign. This narrative is having a withering effect upon those driving
these programs as politicians see their constituents slowly turn from
understanding of the need for these programs to alarmed by them.

That the government has been unable to mount any sort of credible counter
story is pretty amazing to me and somewhat a relief. After all, true police
states have amazing propaganda machines. This one feels reminiscent of an
intern running marketing at a startup!

~~~
Spooky23
The government has a very effective methodology for protecting things it deems
important.

Congress got a little feisty about these programs, and for a week we started
hearing about "chatter" that was threatening US embassies. We closed embassies
and said scary things. Then we bombed some Al Queda in the Arabian Peninsula
folks in Yemen. The next day, with much less fanfare, it was reported that it
wasn't "chatter" (which implies stuff from the NSA monitoring), but a specific
warning from an official in the government of Yemen.

These sorts of things are very effective at controlling Congress, especially
House members. Nobody wants to be the Congressman who pushed to shutdown
programs that thwart terrorists. At the end of the day, what you think doesn't
matter. It's what your Congressional representatives think -- and the ability
of the administration to manipulate the general public's sense of fear makes
it difficult to dismantle these programs.

~~~
jusben1369
The political backdrop for the US embassy closing was more the traditional
Democratic vs Republican back and forth. The right and Fox news hammered this
administration on Benghazi (depending on your POV that was entirely justified
or horrible partisan politics) with pretty good effect. Therefore, at the
slightest threat of another attack on an embassy the administration goes into
PR panic mode. No WAY can we have a second attack on a consulate within 12 -
18 months - our opponents will have a field day in the press for weeks. So you
have the over reaction of closing down so many embassies.

------
adventured
The thing I find scary about that, is the idea that the only reason he
probably hasn't been arrested is for PR concerns. If nobody had heard of
Lavabit and he pulled this move, I believe they would have went after him
without mercy. His profile is big enough right now that it would just add to
the NSA scandal, prolonging the headlines, so they're debating on a political
basis what to do with him (if anything).

~~~
e12e
It'll be interesting to see if he ends up in jail over something similar to to
the former Qwest CEO was charged with...

It does seem like publicity (and public opinion) is the only defence, that
works, to a certain extent:

\- William Binney (NSA) - "tricked" FBI to record evidence of malicious
prosecution

\- Bradly Manning - got publicity, but was under military jurisdiction

\- Snowden - got publicity - is still(?) alive

\- Joseph Nacchio (qwest ceo) - was first indicted, then tried to claim being
framed (not commenting on the truth of this, just the (public perception of)
sequence of events

\- lavabit - early publicity, rides "Snowden"-wave. Hopefully that'll work.

[edit: formatting]

~~~
001sky
Joseph Nacchio (qwest ceo) - was a crook. not sure what he is doing in this
list here. He got caught in a pump and dump, and did a lot of desperate things
as CEO to enrich himself at the expense of other... Not really alot of mystery
to that one.

~~~
e12e
Well, maybe. I've seen some commentators that aren't as sure, that the case is
quite so clear cut.

Assuming that he is guilty of the charges against him, it would still be
interesting to know if he became a target of investigation as a result of
refusing to cooperate with the NSA. I'm not saying that _is_ the case, but
that it _could_ be the case.

~~~
001sky
It was not (remotely likely) the case that the NSA made him do the illegal and
unethical things that he did do. He was only convicted on a portion of those.
In any event.

 _That being said_ , It may have <likely> been the case that (1) Nacchio may
have had access to information that (if made public) could have
compromised/damaged the NSA's institutional interests and/or the reputation of
its principals; and (2) he may well have threatened to make such information
to become public. But (1) comes with the territory or running a bell operating
company (US west); and (2) comes with the territory of being a desperate, CEO
about to be thrown in Jail. Since these alternative explanations are alot
simpler and easy to make sense of, Its not worth walking out on a limb to
support the alternative hypothesis that the NSA somehow framed Nacchio. It
would be (at best) like framing al capone for tax evasion, understanding it
also to be a fact that he did evade taxes.

~~~
e12e
I don't think NSA _framed_ him. I'm saying NSA _might_ have had a role to play
in him _being investigated /indited_.

Similar to how intelligence services (allegedly) watch "targets" with the aim
to use any illegal/questionable activity to leverage them into assets. The
activity might be fully illegal -- but an intelligence service might not care
about that -- just about having something to hold over a potential asset.

As I understand it -- the idea is that Qwest said no to implementing tapping
in their NOCs, and that the investigation/charges of fraud/pump'n'dump etc
were filed afterwards.

------
WildUtah
If you were going to open an encrypted email service today -- one that would
work like Lavabit -- where in the world would you move to before opening it?

Obviously, the USA is impossible. I'd suspect that the five Anglosphere nation
secret police alliance countries are bad places, too ('Five Eyes': gb, oz, ca,
us, nz). That leaves a lot of world to consider.

Is Ireland better? It's the only first world English-speaking nation that
retains some suspicion and independence toward the Washington Empire, but only
because of the ugly history with Britain.

Japan and Korea seem like bad choices because they're so close to and
dependent on US military operations. Hong Kong and Singapore are subject to
police state rules but usually operate extremely liberally; I wonder how it
would go in those cities for a private communication service.

Germany is making noise about resenting Anglosphere spying, and you could use
an affordable Hetzner server. Looks more and more like that resentment is
feigned and German secret police are probably learning Stasi tactics from the
NSA.

What do people think about Iceland or Switzerland. Is there anyplace in the
FUSSR to consider? What other country would you nominate?

Edit: How about Chile? There's a first world nation that welcomes net startups
and has good reason to cooperate very little with the US secret police. After
all, the current government is made up of moderate lefties that survived the
CIA coup and political murder spree in the 1970s and 1980s.

------
hartator
Now, I feel more and more afraid to leave even a comment on any swoden related
articles. This is not normal.

~~~
tomchristie
Say what you think and say it loud. If everyone stays quiet, nothing changes.

~~~
pmr_
Yes, or everyone that said something is simply getting arrested, barred from
speaking about his charges, and possibly thrown into one of those cozy off-
shore facilities with unclear legal status.

There is an understandable fear that a large bureaucracy is simply going to go
through with whatever they think 'is the law' no matter how many people state
their request. This isn't some irrational fear out of the blue, people see it
happening in their daily lives on much less threating topics and history has
seen it happen on an existential level. Not everybody is important enough to
be granted temporary asylum by some adversary of the 'Big Satan' and some of
us life in countries that have already handed over their own citizens to some
of its torture facilities without asking questions.

Simply encouraging people to say things out loud when the system has already
spun out of control so much is endangering them. We should rather educate
people on forms of protest which are not going to be subdued so easily.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Let a hundred flowers bloom, right? You would have done well under that
policy.

I'd like to see a little more public noise _before_ we get to the point where
the government can have everyone who's publicly backed a certain viewpoint
summarily executed, though. If you're too afraid of that endpoint, you end up
actually helping to bring it about. We can provide enough background struggle
that it never comes within the government's power to remove it all.

------
drunkenmasta
I don't get it. Why doesn't someone just speak out on principle. Out of
everyone who "can't" speak I would expect at least one to come out and do it
even though it might get them into "trouble."

~~~
michaelt
1.4 million Americans have 'TS/SCI' clearance, but only Manning and Snowdon
felt inclined to suffer the consequences of speaking out of principle.

I think it's easy to imagine you would speak out when you don't have access to
anything secret - but when it's you and your family that will be put at risk I
can understand the disincentives looming large.

~~~
nakedrobot2
It's also quite telling that neither Manning nor Snowden have a young family
to take care of - no wife or kids.

It is easier (although still monumentally difficult, of course) to take a
stand when you are not taking down an innocent wife and children with you, who
you might never see again.

------
altero
Now it is just question of time when FBI finds child porn on his computer :-(

------
ericxb
Related: here's an interview with the owner of an ISP who went through
something similar. He was under a gag order for 6 years. The interview also
has comments from the Lavabit owner and his lawyer.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpRp-D5v5NQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpRp-D5v5NQ)

------
keefe
I hope he is, he knew what he was playing at.

------
rorrr2
There's one positive outcome of this sad story. We now know for a fact that
NSA didn't (yet) break the encryption algorithms, that's why they need to
perform these insane acts.

~~~
Ygg2
Or they are too lazy to wait for the decryption to finish...

~~~
MacsHeadroom
Or maybe the NSA is a very large organization with many departments so secret
that their capabilities and existence are on a need to know basis and not
flaunted around unnecessarily just to save some time or effort?

~~~
Ygg2
Right, or they could be a bunch of incompetent idiots, which is way hilarious.

------
icantthinkofone
This guy's credibility was shot down pretty well here on HN and elsewhere
earlier in the week. I wouldn't place much credence into anything he says.

~~~
epo
This guy is keeping the story on the news agenda loud and clear. I'm sure he
doesn't care about the opinion of some Aspieish idiots on a discussion group.
What's your credibility?

~~~
kamjam
_This story was originally published on Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:44 PM EDT_

To be fair, the article is from 3 days ago. More likely someone just posted
the link on HN. Also, it's not the guys fault is NBC News are a little slow in
reporting a story...

~~~
uxp
I don't understand how the publication date of this article correlates to the
subject of the article lacks credibility.

Do you care to cite specific examples of how Lavabit's founder should not be
trusted?

~~~
kamjam
_This guy is keeping the story on the news agenda loud and clear._

I was referring to this part of the comment, nothing else.

