Posted on 08/08/2013 9:51:33 PM PDT by TennesseeProfessor
Whether these “secure” service providers cave in and cooperate
or shut down and close shop doesn’t matter to the government.
Either outcome is a win for them as the goal is to either surveil
ALL electronic traffic or stop it .
It’s all about total control....either result satisfy’s that agenda.
Yep. Tormail got shut down too.
"If the right forces us all to either defend (Jeremiah) Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists."
That should have ended his writing career. Do you really think that FR is an appropriate place to post his articles?
Levison is a good man!
I will support him with my business in any new venture he starts...he just got a HUGE gold star for this action.
Statement from LAVABIT
My Fellow Users,
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. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. 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. 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.
What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.
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.
Sincerely,
Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC
Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.
Was just reading this. I wouldn’t be surprised if the government threatened to hit him with as many counts of conspiracy as e-mails Snowden had sent if they didn’t close down.
Whatever Snowden leaked, was probably very, very important. I bet the information he still has is likely even more important.
We are committed to the privacy of our users, and will absolutely not release user data without an order that is legally enforceable under the laws of British Columbia, Canada, which is the jurisdiction where our servers are located. However, if we do receive such an order, we are required to do everything in our power to comply with the law. Hushmail will not accept an order from any authority or investigative agency that is not enforceable under the laws of British Columbia, Canada. Please read our Privacy Policy for more information.
But I thought the data was always encrypted
When one Hushmail user sends an email to another Hushmail user, the body and attachments of that email are kept on our server in encrypted form, and under normal circumstances, we would have no access to that data. We can’t just pick an arbitrary encrypted email message off the server and read it. An encrypted email message cannot be decrypted without the passphrase, and in the normal course of operations, we do not store passphrases. However, we may be required to store a passphrase for an account identified in a court order enforceable in British Columbia, Canada.
Sunlight is a disinfectant, and cockroaches hate it.
I hope Levison doesn’t have any “accidents.”
It is not reasonable to ask any American to participate in violating the Constitutional rights of other US citizens.
The case is fairly simple. (1) The US can listen to the communications of foreign enemies whether they're talking to US citizens or not. This is allowed by law. (2) The US cannot collect/listen to communications (any variety) of US citizens. This is not allowed by law (or constitution), and there is good reason to believe it has been taking place.
The 2nd is what Snowden revealed and is what makes him a whistleblower instead of a spy/traitor.
And it's also why listening to any email used by Snowden is not acceptable. If it's in contact with foreign enemies, then go ahead and listen. If not, then there's no reason for it.
The secret courts and secret warrants and legal muzzles are also problematic.
The government will go to any lengths to protect it’s perceived right to do anything it wants because it has (a perceived right) to OUR money (i.e., taxes). And with secret courts, nothing is beyond their capability! Wait...isn’t that what they do in communist countries?
While I blame all presidents since at lest WWII for helping to bring this about, especially GWB, this is happening under Obama. He has taken it to a new level. A level so low and vile, that if a Republican had done this, we would have marches in streets, with literally hundreds of thousands Americans participating. Obama will continue all of this because he knows he can. He needs to be stopped by Congress. I am now starting to see that Rand Paul has a chance in 2016, if he plays his cards right. Assuming we still have an election then.
Revolt is coming.
Businesses with trade secrets and details of negotiations to protect - not illegal by any stretch - are going to want to minimize the risk of bureaucratic surveillance.
This will cost our economy bigtime. For example:
If he doesn’t want the federal government telling him what to do, he could move to the Cayman Islands and offer his service there, and make it a satellite-only service provider. The federal government would no longer have jurisdiction.
Guarantee you it's not about Snowden, but about opening the system up, to the feds, for ALL users.
So, if I send myself an email with several ‘key words’, would I get the full force of BB no-knocking on my door?
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.
Agreed.
Wait. Does it matter who wrote the article? Unless it says things that aren’t true, I don’t care if Stalin himself wrote it.
I’m much more shocked to see such blatantly leftist tactics deployed on FR than seeing an article by this author.
We - Have no fear of the truth, no matter the source.
We - Don’t attempt to discredit the information by Ad Hominem. That’s what the other side does.
Indeed, I yam!
Well, there’s another small business gone under the Obama Administration.
Short answer: yes.
I trust Obama not at all.
“You’d trust the Russians more than obama? “
Well, Pravda carries more truthful stories than MSNBC.
That said, no I don’t trust the Russians. But I do trust the Russians not to make all your emails casually available to the IRS, DEA, whatever to troll for whatever they decide is illegal today.
They say the average american commits three felonies a day the laws have gotten so cumbersome, so if and when they want to get you, they will. No sense in making it easy.
There is that.
>> What has [Tim Robbins] said since...
Former Senator Feingold was an outspoken critic of Bush’s programs. Although, he eventually lost his seat, I don’t recall any complaints he had about Bush’s successors.
I don’t care if Stalin himself wrote it.
Would you care if Walter Duranty wrote it?
Are you saying that the information presented is false?
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