USA v Lavabit LLC Email Account of Joey006 | Hacker News Reader

USA v Lavabit LLC Email Account of Joey006

cryptome.org

59 pointszabuni27 comments

posting at the top level for visibility.

this appears to be an earlier, known case where lavabit complied. it does not seem to be the case that caused the shutdown.

see for example http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/lavabit-snowden/ :

Court records show that, in June, Lavabit complied with a routine search warrant targeting a child pornography suspect in a federal case in Maryland. That suggests that Levison isn’t a privacy absolutist. Whatever compelled him to shut down now must have been exceptional.

The timeline doesn't fit, anyway:

As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

http://ia600900.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.246...

Thanks! As someone who has a PACER account and uses RECAP to upload case files to the Internet Archive, I'm always appreciative when someone is out there using the IA stored copies.

Docket @ the IA: http://ia800908.us.archive.org/9/items/gov.uscourts.mdd.2362... (has SHA hashes, as well as IA links to the docs)

Warning to anyone reading through that. The contents are horrifying.

What is the significance of this post? It has no context or explanation and I'm at a loss as to what this is about, or why it is significant. It's akin to a magic number in a script; without at least a brief comment it's all but meaningless!

another article mentioned that lavabit had complied with a child porn request. so i guess it's related to that (the first doc mentions child porn).

as to why it's significant. first, cryptome doesn't really filter stuff, so they aren't "endorsing" it. someone submitted it to cryptome. perhaps they thought it was related to the recent closure (at first glance, it doesn't seem to be).

here you go: Court records show that, in June, Lavabit complied with a routine search warrant targeting a child pornography suspect in a federal case in Maryland. That suggests that Levison isn’t a privacy absolutist. Whatever compelled him to shut down now must have been exceptional.

from http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/lavabit-snowden/

I think it gives a reason for why the Feds went after lavabit.com and the reason being CP.

"Lavabit abruptly shuts down" [0]

The original poster believes that this case is apparently the reason for Lavabit shutting down. The issue as hand is that a proper search warrant has been issued for the email address in the title. Lavabit appears to have chosen to shut down rather than respond to the search warrant (or has responded to the search warrant, but chosen to shut down rather than have it happen again)

[0] - http://lavabit.com/

The warrant shown on Cryptome is from an earlier case in which Lavabit complied. Lavabit has received something much different in this current case, which is what led to the shut down.

Indeed. I missed the section where it showed that the warrant was executed, and "One Memorex DVD" was retrieved.

For anyone curious why it is entered as "filed 4/11/13" but executed on "3/28/13" (weeks before the filing), it appears as though it was served on 3/28/13 and the clerk filed & entered it to the system on 4/11/13.

Even though this may be clear to some, it sounds a bit misleading to me and at first I thought they were just doing a poor job of backdating stuff they hadn't done properly.

Question: If Lavabit was operating in the way they say they did (i.e. zero-knowledge encryption), how could this warrant be complied with? Dump their encrypted maildir to a disc?

All the report says they handed over is an unmarked DVD. Maybe all it contains is encrypted data.

I don't believe that Lavabit ever claimed to be encrypting email metadata. Then there was also the requests for payment records, log information and the like.

So even if they couldn't deliver all requested information, they could deliver some.

Lavabit only offered that extra level of privacy on paid accounts.

The free accounts didn't have it.

How is the defendant an email account and not a person or party of some kind?

The email is likely incriminated in some way but the identity of the person that registered/uses the email is unknown.

"The form of the styling of this case — the defendant being an object, rather than a legal person — is because this is a jurisdiction in rem (power over objects) case, rather than the more familiar in personam (over persons) case. In current US legal practice, in rem is most widely used in the area of asset forfeiture, frequently in relation to controlled substances offenses. In rem forfeiture cases allow property (in this case, $124,700 in cash) to be directly sued by and forfeited to the government, without either just compensation or the possessor (and presumptive owner) being convicted of a crime."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U....

Great explanation, thank you!

There was a great article on civil forfeiture in recent New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_...

it's basically how the police are allowed to rob you.

A famous one in first-amendment law (and in literature) is United States v. One Book Called Ulysses (1933). Gives it a rather evocative feel, setting up an image of the U.S. government and the book itself battling it out.

There are also some unkind jokes about the state of Kansas derived from the title Quantity of Books v. Kansas (1964).

This has nothing to do with civil forfeiture. In rem actions are often used in cases where the owner of some property is unknown. Thus they are commonly used for domain name cybersquatting actions for example.

Humans have rights. Property does not.

Amidst all the recent fervor surrounding law enforcement and privacy, I think the documents at the linked site are a good reminder that there are people in law enforcement working to protect the innocent.

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