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
AFP Photo / Mike Clarke
“Our
government can order us to do things that are morally and ethically
wrong, order us to spy on other Americans and then order us — using the
threat of imprisonment — to keep it all secret.”
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.
The statement uploaded by Lavabit owner Ladar Levison on Thursday, August 8
“
Let’s be clear,” Levison told RT’s Andrew Blake in a phone interview this week. “
I would love to tell you everything that’s happened to me over the last six weeks. I’m just legally prevented from doing so.”
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.
Ladar Levison (Photo from www.facebook.com/KingLadar)
Those
same Snowden disclosures helped spark a domestic, then worldwide debate
about online privacy, and Levison said his site saw a huge surge in
traffic after a leaked email tied the former NSA contractor to a Lavabit
account. After a mysterious six weeks he can only allude to, however,
Levison pulled the plug last Thursday and is now insisting everyone
reconsider where they go for email.
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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The truth about why Silent Circle silenced their secure email service
DavidGewirtzTV
