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Comment by AmVess | Hacker News Reader

"Because the government has barred Lavabit from disclosing the nature of its demands, we still don't know what information the government is seeking, or why it's seeking it," said Ben Wizner, a national security lawyer for the ACLU. "It's hard to have a debate about the reasonableness of the government's actions — or Lavabit's response, for that matter — when we don't know what we're debating."

So there we have it, a modern-day Geheime Staatspolizei in the USA.

I wonder what lunacy will pop up next.

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>"It's hard to have a debate about the reasonableness of the government's actions — or Lavabit's response, for that matter — when we don't know what we're debating."

I'd say that actually simplifies the situation quite nicely. It is unreasonable. Period. The end.

It's pure evil, not "unreasonable".

Not only you have to suffer from a person holding a gun, you also should not even try to ask for help. You are a hostage in the hands of an armed sadistic monster. That's what it is.

There's only one way to fix things: voting and participating in a political process. You solve nothing by calling government a sadistic monster. The fact that each new politician elected turns out to be a scumbag and nothing really changes, doesn't mean there's a better way to run society than a democracy. The fact that they use everyone's tax money to kill and detain innocent people all over the world and spy on everyone doesn't really mean it's a bad system. You know, the world is not all black and white, you radical.

>you radical

I wonder how words like "socialist", "radical", or "reactionary" become insults. are these trends cyclical like fashion and seasons or perhaps not accurately predictable like day-to-day weather?

Reactionary has always been an insult.

If you are referring to its origins in the French Revolution, then you could say the same for "conservative" and "right." I personally don't consider any of the aforementioned terms as derogatory. They are sometimes useful categorizations of views on specific topics.

I don't think anyone has characterized their own views as "reactionary" unless it was part of a self-deprecating joke, sarcasm, or rhetorical flourish. It's like Chauvinism - implying that you are a thoughtless defender of something.

You've obviously never read any Mencius Moldbug [1].

[1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com

Downvoters didn't notice sarcasm.

Or thought that he was using sarcasm to register opinions that would have been better supported by actual arguments.

There is one argument only: violence is being hidden under lies that supposedly justify it without any proof. Therefore it's evil. The ideas of government, democracy, monarchy and obedience to the pope are all evil for one simple reason: those who invested in them want you to blindly believe "it's for your own good" while instead of peacefully arguing with you, they bully and threaten.

Mathematicians would never accept bullying as a proof. Scientist with an opinion does not expect that people would simply believe him and follow his ideas. He has to waste as much time as needed to prove he's right. And if he cannot make people voluntarily trust him, he'd simply go home, not to the Congress to pass a law.

Politician, pope or abusive parent do not do that. They bully you directly, bribe people around to bully you, bully other people to discourage you from following their steps and so on. Then, after enough bullying and brainwashing generations of children in state-organized schools, folks have impression that "that's how we signed our social contract". The usual response to this red-pill knowledge is "you are too radical, the world is not black and white".

So here I am. The world is indeed not black and white. And that's precisely why we cannot have any blind beliefs in a centralized violent institution. You don't trust random unarmed stranger. Why would you EVER trust a group of well-motivated trained, and armed, and protected professional killers?

The only way out of this hell is to acknowledge that violence is never justified. Even in case of a self-defense. In the latter case, the most you can count on is being understood and forgiven by people around you. But both you, they and your victim would be better off if you didn't end up in that situation. That's why people use insurance, locks, video cameras, boycott, identification, thick walls instead of training for being all-powerful supermen. We prevent issues to avoid "solving" them by force. Plain simple.

Government is entirely opposite of what methods we use in our private lives with our fellow friends and neighbours.

... or maybe they like the idea of democracy, and recognize the fact that voting isn't the only democratic power they have to control their government.

I can't believe this post was downvoted. The sarcasm in the last sentence ought to have been obvious to all.

Except that it is their political process, one for which they've designed all the rules and systems in place to carry it out. It is prone to the "rigged game" phenomenon.

Well, said. This simply can't be allowed to continue, especially in America which holds liberty as its central value.

"America" doesn't not hold anything.

There are actual individuals out there. Some of them believe they live in a magical part of the globe with some values within its geography. Others use abstractions like "liberty", "democracy", "national borders" etc to justify bullying some people at expense of other people (and never at their own expense - which is important!).

"America", "Russia", "government", "police", "justice", "court", "nation" - all are made-up words used to justify kicking everyone's ass. People can agree on more peaceful ways to define property rights and protect each other and their environment, then simply believe that existing mafia has a mandate to solve all these problems under "public watch".

If you compare modern pro-government rhetoric with theology of 13th century, you'll find a lot of parallels. Simply replace "god" with "society".

"Without religion and church there's no morality" => "without government we'll have anarchic apocalypses"

"You must trust pope because he's set here by God" => "You must trust mr. president because there is society that elected him"

"If god does not exist, who created everything?" => "Without government how would we build roads and fly to the moon?"

"The Bible says what's good and what's bad" => "The constitution defines our rights."

Etc.

He hasn't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court order. This case has much higher profile than the CEO who got in trouble a while ago. Lots of international newspapers have written stories about Lavabit after the shutdown.

I think if Levison was arreted, it would be a turning point in the political implications of this case. From the slow response, it seems like the authorities are worried about doing this. And rightfully so.

He hasn't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court order.

I have to suspect that's because he was willing to shut down his company and make a big stink. It he hadn't done that, I think it would have been much easier for the feds to arrest some random guy in a Dallas apartment, suggesting that he's a nefarious hacker in league with Snowden and possibly other nefarious people. With 10k users, I'm sure they could find something to say that there were, say, "suspected drug dealers" using the service.

It was very smart of him to get out front of the story. Now if the Feds go after him, he's the businessman taking a principled stand.

> I have to suspect that's because he was willing to shut down his company and make a big stink

Why so many are stuck on the fact he "shut down the company" and did a good dead. I been downvoted about this before and its fine, I just didnt get my answer.

The Feds did not ask him to shut down; it wasnt Government mission. Their mission was to get access to Lavabit data. Said that, regardless if he shut down or not, Government will or already did get full access to Lavabit data. Its even worse that they shut down; if they were online you could go and clean up your mailbox (not necessarily from anything illegal, but for example your own naked pictures you sent to your wife). But since they are offline, nothing can be done. Government won.

Lavabit claims they encrypted email on receipt and only decrypted when you logged in and gave them a password they could unlock the encryption key with. If the feds required lavabit to retain the clear text copies of received mail longer than they did for AV/Spam filtering, shutting down the service solves this. Similarly, it prevents anyone from getting the decrypted copies when someone accesses the server.

On the other hand, if Lavabit merely got a warrant of Edward Snowden's email, shutting down the service and claiming they can't talk about it is just a publicity stunt since secret or not, it's pretty clear the government has a legally valid reason for that warrant.

Not just past, but also future data: "He likened the demands to a requirement to install a tap on his telephone. "

Shutting down the company alerted users to possible surveillance. Government wanted to snoop in secret. Now their secret is out, and they may or may not get to snoop on their target(s) via other channels. Levison loses the proceeds of his business, but he has behaved ethically by discontinuing his service since he can no longer deliver what was promised. Levison took the closest thing he could get to a win.

Levison gets extra karma because he put everyone's interests ahead of his own short-term financial interests. By shutting his business in the manner that he did, he has poisoned the well for gov't snooping at other similar services. If he is lucky, he may suffer little or no further gov't retribution.

Once he's shut down the business, the ability of the judge to gain compliance by imprisoning him has been sharply narrowed. That is the point of many contempt proceedings.

Levison poisoned his well, and every other well like it.

> It was very smart of him to get out front of the story. Now if the Feds go after him, he's the businessman taking a principled stand.

This has been my argument with Snowden, too. It's damning that people have to raise a huge fuss in the media by deep-sixing themselves before the government gets to spin their story in order to not get railroaded.

The chilling effects of the threat of arrest for secret crimes should be even more concerning than if he has been arrested or not.

The middle-class public generally isn't against arrest and/or execution by the government for secret crimes. What they are against is the arrest of people that they relate to, and who share their values. The only principled stands that they can understand are standing for children, animals, personal possessions, and customer service.

IMO, by doing all of these interviews where all he can be specific about is that he has had to close down his modestly successful independent business in order to protect his customers, he's made himself pretty safe. That is, until some child-porn ring bust gets press released as using lavabit as a crucial means of communication.

Hmm, so enforcement of our secret laws is determined by the political implications. They seem less like "laws" and more like whims.

This is completely obvious to anyone who is making an effort at observing what's going on right now. The big problem is that is isn't obvious to a casual observer.

From my perspective, as a foreigner, the US Government is currently doing a ridiculous chicken dance to avoid overt similarities to any famous totalitarian government. But at the same time, it seems very obvious that it is systematically sidestepping many principles of democracy and the rule of law. You won't be able to say something like "The US Government agencies are acting like the Stasi" and have all your facts intact. But there are plenty of dodgy things happening that would fit smoothly into the policy of many previous totalitarian governments.

I think that pointing out all these small details in a credible fashion is one of the necessary actions to get more popular support against these policies. Things aren't looking very good.

It's not just the secret laws that are like that. I think it's an exaggeration to say that most people commit "three felonies a day", but someone running any sort of business or organization probably does something that could be interpreted as breaking some federal law or other regularly. Or the feds can just question someone until they contradict themselves on something, then bust them for lying to a federal official.

this is why you never talk to the police

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

While I hope no harm comes to Levison, part of me wishes the gov't would charge him. I'd like to think they couldn't find a jury that would convict him, and I wouldn't be surprised if it incited a large public reaction. So I bet they don't charge him; since Levison has made it obvious that he won't be bullied.

“One must lie low, no matter how much it went against the grain, and try to understand that this great organization remained, so to speak, in a state of delicate balance, and that if someone took it upon himself to alter the dispositions of things around him, he ran the risk of losing his footing and falling to destruction, while the organization would simply right itself by some compensating reaction in another part of its machinery – since everything interlocked – and remain unchanged, unless, indeed, which was very probable, it became still more rigid, more vigilant, severer, and more ruthless.”

― Franz Kafka, The Trial

For anyone interested, that's these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo

I think that it's in the 'The Gulag Archipelago' where Solzhenitsyn says that by contrast with the NKVD/KGB, the gestapo look like gentlemen.

Solzhenitsyn may be right. But he was biased, having been prosecuted by NKVD.

> It's hard to have a debate about the reasonableness of the government's actions

It's not hard at all. A government mandating people do things that they can't tell anybody is not reasonable by any measure.

Anything short of a very clear revolution (regarding the NSA and the political system in general) won't solve the real basic issues.

I just hope it will be a rational and calm revolution, not a bloody one.

There will be no revolution any time soon... Most people are to busy trying to catch up on their TV shows on their DVR. The few issues people do get fired up about are stupid ones (who can get married, fake IRS scandals, justifying shooting kids in the street, etc).

"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

-George Orwell, 1984

> Most people are to busy trying to catch up on their TV shows on their DVR.

Bread and circus.

I think you're right, there will be no revolution. But there's a good chance the US Empire will gradually dissolve and collapse in on itself. For example, Congress seems intent on making the governement non-functioning.

Perhaps the NSA has a sense of history, and are trying to delay our eventual collapse, thinking that the institution and empire itself is rotten and calcified. But I'm often charitable that way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire

> The first two centuries of the Empire were a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana ("Roman Peace").[6] It reached its greatest expanse during the reign of Trajan (98–117 AD). In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a crisis that threatened its existence, but was reunified and stabilized under the emperors Aurelian and Diocletian. Christians rose to power in the 4th century, during which time a system of dual rule was developed in the Latin West and Greek East. After the collapse of central government in the West in the 5th century, the eastern half of the Roman Empire continued as what would later be known as the Byzantine Empire.

Relevant to your point, Rage Against the Machine had it right a while back: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_-QGNUYL5g

"They load the clip in omnicolour Said they pack the 9, they fire it at prime time"

That version is blocked in Germany. This one isn't: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0j0GCbMC7A Say about RATM (fans) what you will, but this song, and this video of it, still gives me goosebumps. They had it right indeed.

Words cannot describe the restraint I'm exercising right now, to not just post lyrics and generally endulge. I know HN is not the place for that, but I still want to leave this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljQ2DM8Mve4

Laws concerning marriage equality and use of deadly force are not "stupid" issues.

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