I'm really unimpressed with everything I've seen so far on Lavabits, Edward Snowden's preferred encrypted email service, like this NYT piece.
Levenson, the owner and operator, refused to turn over the encryption key to the FBI when they came calling with multiple warrants. Instead, he trolled a judge's order by printing out 14 pages of very fine 4 pt print of strings of numbers to make it very hard to input.
Finally -- although you'd never know from the tech press who began to go silent or mumble at this part of the story -- he did in fact turn over his key to the FBI to look at files.
But by now, they're probably deleted -- months have passed. Deleted by user Edward Snowden, if not Levenson himself.
Here's my comment to the New York Times that didn't get let through -- I find that the moderators have an automatic default always to kill any comment that seems to speak directly to a journalist and complain about flaws in his reporting:
You're failing to report some key details here and also not getting the larger picture.
Why does an email service, just because it's hip and used by the crypto kids, get to insist on absolute encryption even of criminal suspects, and get to defy legitimate law-enforcement orders? It doesn't, as the judge has let them know.
We're seeing here the real face of the radical cyperphunks movement -- they want absolute encryption and don't recognize the state's requests as legitimate, ever. But we can't expect to maintain a liberal democracy society under the rule of law if a small movement of anarchists get to do this, and protect criminals from justice.
There is absolutely no technical or ethical reason that Lavabit couldn't have turned over Snowden's emails. By his own admission he hacked the NSA and then fled to Russia, which is hostile to the US, and means he is rightly charged with espionage and treason. The feds offered him to filter out just Snowden's mail from the interception of the whole feed, but he rejected that on principle, not just the real-time issue. In fact, wiretaps of phones are in real time and yes, they show the suspect's associations. Why is email special and any different than a telephone line?!
Levison also turned over the keys in 4 point type on 11 printed pages which would mean that the feds would have to struggle to read it and manually input it -- and risk mistakes that would throw the whole thing off. That was just childish trolling on his part.
Meanwhile, at the New Yorker, they don't have such tough moderation:
Look, the Navy and Tor Project should have worried about putting legitimate users at risk
and self-governed better then they wouldn't have the FBI/NSA cracking them.Telephone companies do not create lines or phones that the government cannot legitimately intercept with warrants.
Yet radical rebel ISPs like Lavabit think they're entitled to have absolute encryption and not cooperate with law-enforcement's legitimate and necessary requests in a democratic society. That's not acceptable.
You forgot to mention that the government offered to filter only Snowden's communications out of the mix of all customers, and you forgot to note how Levenson responded to the key request by providing a print-out of a 15 page list of numbers in 4 point print, so it was impossible to see and input without mistakes -- to foil and obfuscate.
The idea that anarchist ISPs get to hold hostage legitimate government and invoke rights notions like privacy of unrelated customers just isn't acceptable -- it's a manipulative ruse. The government needs to seize any and all servers and communications from this company because of its refusal to cooperate.
In real life, no one can get absolute immunity from law enforcement when they commit crimes. If nothing else, they can be thrown in jail for contempt of court. The Internet anarchists have to learn this truth as well, otherwise we will all soon be under their tyranny.
They've already shown that they don't use due process or democracy when their leaders like Schwartz, Manning, or Snowden just grab and go, heedless of the consequences.
Here's the best article I've read on the subject in the more moderate Information Week which doesn't take the side of radical hackers.
Ars Technica unfortunately whines and lawfares and Fisks and all the rest, trying to prove that the law is "different" for the Internet and email service providers. Well, why? Just because the structure is different doesn't mean a thing. The FBI did offer a filter to pull only Snowden's stuff. Given that they have a warrant only for Snowden's stuff, they can't take or use the other stuff anyway, it will not stand up in court -- hello!
Levinson even told the FBI at one point that he's build some sort of filter/collector just to pull Snowden's stuff for them, but he'd require $3500 in development consulting fees.
Levenson is not a hero. This is not a story of a scrappy little Internet firm standing up to Big Brother. It's a story of sniveling little brother not cooperating with legitimate law-enforcement which is not Big Brother.
The extreme encryption movement is now revealing itself not to be in any kind of good faith about merely fighting "for privacy rights"; they have to be seen for what they are, a band of outlaws looking to legitimate themselves.
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