Published on Aug 14, 2013
21:45
Hear Senator Obama speaking out against a lack of judicial oversight
for National Security Letters and the associated gag order.
Source: http://www.democracynow.org/shows/201..."Owner of Snowden's Email Service on Why He Closed Lavabit Rather Than Comply With Gov't"
"Former Internet Provider Gagged by National Security Letter Recounts How He Was Silenced for 6 Years"
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Spooked off the Net: Owner of Lavabit email blames US surveillance for closure
Published time: August 15, 2013 17:39
Edited time: August 15, 2013 19:06
Edited time: August 15, 2013 19:06
Ladar Levison has more to say about Uncle Sam nowadays than what you can fit in your inbox. The 32-year-old owner and operator behind the email service Lavabit has spent practically a decade putting together a product so highly encrypted and secure that its customers included privacy-minded clientele like human rights workers and NSA leaker Edward Snowden. At least it did up until last week.
Levison never quite made a name for himself over Lavabit, or anything else in the realm of tech for that matter. All of that changed on Thursday, however, when he announced abruptly on Lavabit.com that he had shut down the site without notice, sending around 410,000 customers scrambling to create new accounts elsewhere.
“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,” he wrote on the website.
And just like that, Levison turned the lights off and walked away from the homegrown business that has been his brainchild since he drafted up an idea for a super-encrypted email provider in the wake of the post-9/11 PATRIOT Act. Nine years ago, Levison launched Lavabit to help keep the government from encroaching on the communications of concerned Americans. Almost a decade down the road, though, Uncle Sam has stepped down on Levison’s throat so hard that now he can’t speak at all.
Levison may have likely violated that rule already, and said he’s gotten into hot water with his lawyer over last week’s public statement. The very predicament he has found himself in is so peculiar, though, that watching his words with that regard is likely the least of his worries.
Although he can’t comment on it — not to confirm, deny or admit anything — Levison is likely involved in what could be the biggest privacy case of a generation. Nowhere has he officially said that he’s entwined in any sort of litigation, but on his Lavabit statement last week he wrote, “We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.” That sentence, he said, was likely more than he was supposed to admit.
“Contrary to popular belief, I am not trying to go to jail,” he told RT. “I’m trying to make a difference, but I’m not trying to do it from behind laws.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Levison
can’t admit he’s received a gag-order preventing him from discussing
why he voluntarily shut down his site, because doing so what admit such a
gag-order — and the legal justification behind it — even exists.What is known, however, is that Levison and anyone with a secure email account is in the midst of what has been called the New Crypto Wars. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies have insisted that encrypted communications are increasingly keeping them from solving crimes and catching terrorists, and the recent disclosures attributed by Edward Snowden made it clear that Uncle Sam isn’t unopposed to learning more about Americans. In fact, one recently leaked NSA document attributed to Snowden revealed that the federal government has given itself the power to legally intercept and indefinitely hold onto emails solely because they are encrypted. In recent weeks privacy advocates have increasingly made calls for email users to start using encryption to evade surveillance, meanwhile a just unearthed legal brief filed by Google gives the indication that anything ever sent to or from a Gmail account isn’t private.
Levison won’t admit that the government can decrypt even highly secure emails. He doesn’t rule out the possibility that the National Security Agency has developed the technology necessary to do such, though, and has made repeated pleas for American email users to take their accounts of the US.
“I think the amount of information that they’re collecting on people that they have no right to collect information on is the most alarming thing,” he told RT. “I mean, the Fourth Amendment is supposed to guarantee that our government will only conduct surveillance on people in which it has a probable suspicion or evidence that they are committing some crime, and that that evidence has been reviewed by a judge and signed off by a judge before that surveillance begins. And if there’s anything alarming, it’s that now that’s all being done after the fact. Everything’s being recorded, and then a judge can after the fact say it’s okay to go look at the information.”
Read More Here
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DavidGewirtzTV
Published on Aug 13, 2013
David
Gewirtz interviews Silent Circle CEO Michael Janke to discover the
inside story about why one of the most respected secure communications
providers killed their encrypted email service in light of NSA
surveillance concerns.
For more, visit http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/
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