Sunday, August 18, 2013

feds threaten to arrest lavabit founder for shutting service down...,


techdirt | The saga of Lavabit founder Ladar Levison is getting even more ridiculous, as he explains that the government has threatened him with criminal charges for his decision to shut down the business, rather than agree to some mysterious court order. The feds are apparently arguing that the act of shutting down the business, itself, was a violation of the order:
... a source familiar with the matter told NBC News that James Trump, a senior litigation counsel in the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., sent an email to Levison's lawyer last Thursday – the day Lavabit was shuttered -- stating that Levison may have "violated the court order," a statement that was interpreted as a possible threat to charge Levison with contempt of court.
That same article suggests that the decision to shut down Lavabit was over something much bigger than just looking at one individual's information -- since it appears that Lavabit has cooperated in the past on such cases. Instead, the suggestion now is that the government was seeking a tap on all accounts:
Levison stressed that he has complied with "upwards of two dozen court orders" for information in the past that were targeted at "specific users" and that "I never had a problem with that." But without disclosing details, he suggested that the order he received more recently was markedly different, requiring him to cooperate in broadly based surveillance that would scoop up information about all the users of his service. He likened the demands to a requirement to install a tap on his telephone.
It sounds like the feds were asking for a full on backdoor on the system, not unlike some previous reports of ISPs who have received surprise visits from the NSA.

2 comments:

Uglyblackjohn said...

Soon it will be illegal to log off of facebook?

CNu said...

lol, nah brah..., THAT's the sinister beauty of dopamine hegemony. You NEVER have to put your foot down to obtain compliance from a flock that is stamping its little feet to do what you want them to do anyway...,


watch a little more/read a little more about Fanon's wretched of the earth and think about how the governance game board has been shifted 180 degrees since that revolutionary stance was compellingly articulated 50+ years ago...,

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