Email service Lavabit abruptly shut down citing government interference

The Guardian ^ | 8/8/2013 | Spencer Ackerman

[novemberslady]

Bttt for your post at #6

[xzins]

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.

[KosmicKitty]

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.

[RedMDer]

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[unixfox]

The federal government would no longer have jurisdiction.

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.

[I want the USA back]

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.

[HomeAtLast]

“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?

[jpsb]

"What we are going to see is a lot of cloud-based business activity moving off U.S. shores."

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.

[driftdiver]

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.

[Buckeye McFrog]

NASDAQ Tip for the Day:

BUY sneakymail.ru

[null and void]

Sneakymail.ru?

(Dot)ru?

You'd trust the Russians more than obama? Sage advice!

[ducttape45]

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.

[Forgotten Amendments]

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.

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

[Lucky9teen]

I saw this on Facebook....


Meet the man who stood up to the U.S. Government and the NSA: Ladar Levison! Rather than give the government access to all the users' data (encrypted password...s, etc), he refused and shot down the servers and his company. Ten arduous years of work went down the tube. Like Edward Snowden, he put his well being on the back burner in order to stand up for our country, for Liberty and the Constitution. He dared to stand up to this rogue government. Here is the story:

When Edward Snowden emailed journalists and activists in July to invite them to a briefing at the Moscow airport during his long stay there, he used the email account “edsnowden@lavabit.com” according to one of the invitees. Texas-based Lavabit came into being in 2004 as an alternative to Google’s Gmail, as an email provider that wouldn’t scan users’ email for keywords. Being identified as the provider of choice for the country’s most famous NSA whistleblower led to a flurry of attention for Lavabit and its encrypted email services, from journalists, and also, apparently, from government investigators. Lavabit founder Ladar Levison announced Thursday that he’s shutting down the company rather than cooperating with a government investigation (presumably into Snowden).

Lavabit’s website now displays a message about the shutdown, available in full below, along with a request for help paying the legal bill to fight the government in court.

“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,” writes Levison. “After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations.”

Presumably, the government is seeking access to Edward Snowden’s email, email metadata, passwords or encryption keys. And presumably, Levison doesn’t want to grant that access.

“I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States,” writes Levison, based on his experience. This message seems to be a loud and clear one. Washington, D.C.-based think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation predicts that U.S. cloud companies will lose from $21.5 to $35 billion over the next three years. They admit that it is a “rough guess” based on surveys about the chilling effects of the NSA leaks on cloud businesses.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/08/email-company-reportedly-used-by-edward-snowden-shuts-down-rather-than-hand-data-over-to-feds/

*****

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

https://lavabit.com/

[Red in Blue PA]

“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

[TomasUSMC]

He should fund an INTERNATIONAL Snowden/Larry Sinclair book signing tour.

[Old Sarge]

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?

[cherokee1]

“-—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?

[Truth29]

"“-—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.

[Red in Blue PA]

That was my point.