Comment by anologwintermut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anologwintermut | Hacker News Reader

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anologwintermut

Because, if this article is correct[0], his refusal to obey a court order is the only reason the FBI made him hand over private keys.

The story is the FBI asked for Snowden's emails and correspondence. Lavabit said they would not hand over the information(but admitted they had the technical capability ... it was server side encryption after all). Only after that refusal did the FBI start taking more drastic action.

This is, if that story is true, about on par with a Bank complaining that the FBI ransacked the safe all their safety deposit boxes were stored in. Expect the bank neglects to mention that the only reason the FBI had to break open the safe and be put in the position of being able easily break open all the safety deposit boxes was because the Bank failed to to hand over one box when given a valid court order.

This is particularly problematic in Lavabit's case because a major cornerstone of the argument against the NSA's warrantless surveillance is that there are legal means to compel access to data when it is actually necessary and that those means make it totally illegal to do what the NSA was doing. This is really a hard point to argue when those means don't work because other's thumb their nose at the law as well.

[0] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/10/lavabit_unsealed/

After studying the requirements Lavabit said they could write code to do it for $3500. But the FBI said they didn't trust Lavabit to do it right and thought it cost too much. They demanded direct access. http://imgur.com/A3RNQWY

Why is scp redacted? And only partially so...

I think whoever created that imgur image had the word highlighted when they captured it. If you look at the pdf it's not there. (page 100 http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/801182/redacted-pleadi...)

Because it refers to http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-087

> The story is the FBI asked for Snowden's emails and correspondence.

That's not the story that you linked.

From the article you linked: "The filings show that Lavabit was served on June 28 with a so-called “pen register” order requiring it to record, and provide the government with, the e-mail “from” and “to” lines on every e-mail, as well as the IP address used to access the mailbox. Because they provide only metadata, pen register orders can be obtained without “probable cause” that the target has committed a crime."

Yes and No. Yes they originally wanted a so called pen register.I should have been clearer with that. This request was without a warrant. Lavabit refused.

Then the fed's got an order from a Judge for it. Lavabit still refused.

Finally, the Feds, got a court order to the keys to the kingdom so to speak. At this point Lavabit is willing to implement a pen register. The fed's don't trust them to do it, so they stick with the final order. Lavabit shuts down.

Just because the FBI did not get the specific information they wanted as quickly as they would have liked should not entitle them to gather information on people not included in the original warrant... people who the FBI had no probably cause and no justification for grabbing their data.

I just don't understand how that makes sense. "You wouldn't give us Snowden's info so now we get everyone's info!" Why can't the FBI or the court further compel Lavabit to give up just the information they were authorized to get?

I agree the FBI shouldn't get access to everything. From the perspective of a Federal judge,however, there he cannot allow Lavabit to just not comply. So giving the FBI access and maintaining "safeguards" to prevent them from abusing it is an acceptable outcome. (Note, I don't trust those safeguards)

Now, why is that the outcome and not just forcing Lavabit to hand over select information via say the US Marshal's. Because Lavabit said that would take a while to implement and by this point the Feds think Lavabit is dicking around with them, the Feds decided this option won't work.

The feds obviously don't know the code base and can't implement the requested functionality themselves even if they somehow gained access to the service without taking it down. But they can ask for the SSL keys. That's a tangible piece of information the court can force Lavabit to hand over immediately. It makes sense that the government would request it. And it makes some sense that a federal judge would allow it after Lavabit itself rejected the option that preserved the privacy of the rest of it's users.

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