Posted on 08/08/2013 9:51:33 PM PDT by TennesseeProfessor
The email service reportedly used by surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden abruptly shut down on Thursday after its owner cryptically announced his refusal to become "complicit in crimes against the American people."
Lavabit, an email service that boasted of its security features and claimed 350,000 customers, is no more, apparently after rejecting a court order for cooperation with the US government to participate in surveillance on its customers. It is the first such company known to have shuttered rather than comply with government surveillance.
"I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit," founder Ladar Levison wrote on the company's website, reported by Xeni Jardin the popular news site Boing Boing.
Levison said government-imposed restrictions prevented him from explaining what exactly led to his company's crisis point.
"I feel you deserve to know what's going on the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this," Levison wrote. "Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests."
Privacy advocates called the move unprecedented. "I am unaware of any situation in which a service provider chose to shut down rather than comply with a court order they felt violated the Constitution," said Kurt Opsahl, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Silent Circle, another provider of secure online services, announced on Thursday night that it would scrap its own encrypted email offering, Silent Mail. In a blogpost the company said that although it had not received any government orders to hand over information, "the writing is on the wall".
Several technology companies that participate in the National Security Agency's surveillance dragnets have filed legal requests to lift the secrecy restrictions that prevent them from explaining to their customers precisely what it is that they provide to the powerful intelligence service either wittingly or due to a court order. Yahoo has sued for the disclosure of some of those court orders.
The presiding judge of the secret court that issues such orders, known as the Fisa court, has indicated to the Justice Department that he expects declassification in the Yahoo case. The department agreed last week to a review that will last into September about the issues surrounding the release of that information.
There are few internet and telecommunications companies known to have refused compliance with the NSA for its bulk surveillance efforts, which the NSA and the Obama administration assert are vital to protect Americans. One of them is Qwest Communications, whose former CEO Joseph Nacchio convicted of insider trading alleged that the government rejected it for lucrative contracts after Qwest became a rare holdout for post-9/11 surveillance.
"Without the companies' participation," former NSA codebreaker William Binney recently told the Guardian, "it would reduce the collection capability of the NSA significantly."
Snowden was allegedly a Lavabit customer. A Lavabit email address believed to come from Snowden invited reporters to a press conference at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport in mid-July.
While Levinson did not say much about the shuttering of his company he notably did not refer to the NSA, for instance he did say he intended to mount a legal challenge.
"We've already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals," Levinson wrote. "A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company."
He continued: "This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States."
Opsahl noted that the fact that Levinson was appealing a case before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals indicated the government had a court order for Lavabit's data.
"It's taking a very bold stand, one that I'm sure will have financial ramifications," Opsahl said.
"There should be more transparency around this. There's probably no harm to the national security of the United States to have it publicly revealed what are the legal issues here," Opsahl continued.
The justice department said it had no comment to make. Representatives from the NSA, White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Bttt for your post at #6
Absolutely!
The very idea of a secret court is abhorrent to the idea of liberty. As you say, they have secret warrants, secret laws, and secret interpretations.
And secret strikes, captures, trials, and imprisonments, I would imagine.
E-mail get subpoenaed all time - both for criminal and civil cases.
If every e-mail provider who got a subpoena shut down, we would have no e-mail.
Gotta be something more here.
They shouldn't have jurisdiction in the first place.
Sadly, we have become just like China. We do nothing, we stand here and take it.
Oh well.
It’s obvious the gestapo wanted a decryption key or a ‘backdoor’ so they could read all emails. They don’t just look at from and to headers, like they claim.
“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work...”
What an unprecedented display of principles. Sounds like a moral extremist. /s
I often urge taxpayers to make such a difficult choice. They always prefer not to walk away from their years of hard work, and go right on financially supporting the government. If their tax money goes toward murdering infants and supplying terrorists with weaponry and moochers with free stuff, so what?
I think the lesson to be learned here is that the "cloud" is not secure no matter where it's based. Smart people knew this along and kept there confidential data on servers under their direct control.
Its already costing us. I’ve attended some international events and companies in Canada, South America, and the Islands will refuse to do business with mainland America companies because of the Patriot Act.
NASDAQ Tip for the Day:
BUY sneakymail.ru
(Dot)ru?
You'd trust the Russians more than obama? Sage advice!
Not it’s not, not unless a majority of “true” Americans wake up and take back their government. But alas, I do not see that coming. The USA is going the way of Hitler’s Germany and soon no one will be safe from the occupier in chief.
No we wouldn't. America is gone. Nobody cares. We care about gay marriage and Paula Deen and Trayvon. Both sides.
If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. Don't you care about the 9/11 victims? Move along. Oh, did I mention 9/11? /s
A chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications.”
Tim Robbins
April 15, 2003
He should fund an INTERNATIONAL Snowden/Larry Sinclair book signing tour.
Well, being that Tim Robbins is a flaming Leftist, they all said that under GWB.
What has he said since Dear Leader and his ideological boyfriends cam eto power?
“-—not allowed-—court order?” Looks like it is put up or shut up time. We’ll soon find out where the Patriots are. Failure to spit out what he knows makes this guy suspect in his own right. He ought to be able/willing to list all the names on any “order” documents he has. If there are heavy handed obabuttheads involved the least the guy could do is indentify them. If he doesn’t have the guts to do that then I have to assume he has something to hide?
Or it could be something simpler like a FISA court order and the consequences would be he would be arrested and held without access to anyone including counsel. We seem to have secret courts now, so Obama's functionaries could just make people disappear into a classified legal system. Even beyond that, look at how many Benghazi witnesses have been silenced and effectively vanished with Obama's unchecked power.
That was my point.
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