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>it seems like only metadata can be requested, not arbitrary stuff

I think that Ladar Levison would disagree with that comment. According to wikipedia "US government ordered [Ladar] to turn over its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) private keys" [0] which imho would be no different that forcing apple to turn over a software-signing key.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit

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>In an interesting work-around, Levison complied the next day by turning over the private SSL keys as an 11 page printout in 4-point type. The government, not unreasonably, called the printout “illegible.”

>“To make use of these keys, the FBI would have to manually input all 2,560 characters, and one incorrect keystroke in this laborious process would render the FBI collection system incapable of collecting decrypted data,” prosecutors wrote.

http://www.wired.com/2013/10/lavabit_unsealed/

This never made much sense to me. Even the capital letter W at 12 point repeated 2,560 times fills up 1 page plus another 10 lines. Maybe 2,560 bytes printed out as ones and zeros? That still seems like it would only work out to 11 pages at 12 point.

I'm not sure, but maybe there were multiple keys, each of which took 2560 characters? The quote does say "keys".

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