Lavabit
Marcy rounds up what is known about the Lavabit demand that convinced the owner to shut down. NBC adds the owner was threatened with arrest for doing it.
This seems to lead us to the probability that the government wanted to put a sniffer on the Lavabit server to hoover up everything, and Ladar Levison, the owner, felt that was just too much, and involved customers who weren’t accused of anything. Going along with the order would make a mockery of his agreement with his customers which would destroy his business.
Mr Levison said he has complied in the past with court orders concerning individual customers, something that is probably covered by his TOS, i.e. nothing illegal, but this was obviously an attempt to take everything, and Levison just didn’t feel it was right or proper.
It is very telling that an individual small business owner has a stronger sense of right and wrong than huge corporations with lawyers on staff, and more cash than the Treasury.
2 comments
Yeah, I was reading DN (on another story) and watched the two interview vid’s (the 2nd had a former Internet provider, Calyx, that was forced to shutdown because of an NSL). Though, in that case, it was before FISA and so hadn’t been a court order and they were able to fight it, though it took about 6 years. It also spoke about the 4 Connecticut Librarians that received NSL’s about Internet user’s in Libraries there.
I think people should just stop the farce of calling the USA a ‘Democracy’. It isn’t, and hasn’t been for some time. The only real difference from States like E. Germany is that you (probably) wouldn’t be shot trying to leave (well, except they can stop you getting on a plane. So you’d probably have to go to Canada or Mexico first.)
You talk like you think that Canada and Mexico want US citizens in their countries. You can go into the ‘Frontier’ zone of Mexico without much trouble, but to go further, you better bring along your paperwork.
There is a guy in the neighborhood moving to Canada to marry a Canadian, and he had to hire a lawyer to get everything in order. He has to prove he doesn’t owe anything to anyone in the US, as well as all of the normal health, education, criminal etc. questions.
After the War on Drugs™, War on Terror™, and the global financial meltdown, being a citizen of the US is not the guarantee of a warm welcome that it once was.