“The U.S. government in July obtained a search warrant demanding that Edward Snowden’s e-mail provider, Lavabit, turn over the private SSL keys that protected all web traffic to the site, according to to newly unsealed documents,” Kevin Poulsen reports for Wired. “”
“The July 16 order came after Texas-based Lavabit refused to circumvent its own security systems to comply with earlier orders intended to monitor a particular Lavabit user’s metadata, defined as ‘information about each communication sent or received by the account, including the date and time of the communication, the method of communication, and the source and destination of the communication,'” Poulsen reports. “The name of the target is redacted from the unsealed records, but the offenses under investigation are listed as violations of the Espionage Act and theft of government property — the exact charges that have been filed against NSA whistleblower Snowden in the same Virginia court.”
“Lavabit founder Ladar Levison balked at the demand, and the government filed a motion to compel Lavabit to comply. Lavabit told the feds that the user had ‘enabled Lavabit’s encryption services, and thus Lavabit would not provide the requested information,’ the government wrote,” Poulsen reports. “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.'”
“The court ordered Levison to provide a more useful electronic copy. By August 5, Lavabit was still resisting the order, and the judge ordered that Levison would be fined $5,000 a day beginning August 6 until he handed over electronic copies of the keys,” Poulsen reports. “On August 8, Levison shuttered Lavabit, making any attempt at surveillance moot.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: September 11, 2001 broke the United States of America in more ways than too many seem to realize even today.
Perhaps someday, enough people will realize that the U.S. government’s myriad overreactions are significant, ongoing victories for the terrorists.
United States Constitution, Amendment IV:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Join The Electronic Frontier Foundation in calling for a full congressional investigation here.
[Attribution: The Next Web. Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
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NSA can read email, online chats, track Web browsing without warrant, documents leaked by Edward Snowden show – July 31, 2013
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Obama administration demands master encryption keys from firms in order to conduct electronic surveillance against Internet users – July 24, 2013
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A print out! Nice move.
And somehow strangely appropriate for a government bureaucracy.
Should’ve printed backwards and upside down. Though, an intern could make a few days work of 2560 characters. It’s not THAT laborious.
Scribes did it for centuries. Since 2001-09-11, the government’s response to terror has been… disappointing. Can’t remember who was in power in 2001, though.
4 point type is entirely too large, and it should have been in comic sans.
haha and obviously these fools had no OCR software to ready the key.
OCR software would not work well with 4 point type. One error in reading and it’s worthless.
MDN you are so political, playing in that you do condone censorship, govenrment snooping, yet YOU censor others. Hypocrits.
Wow, still here after ten minutes.. that’s hypocritEs idiot!
🙂
Especially if you mention ad blocking software.
I was upset, so I mispelled do, should have been don’t, or better yet do not. I made a valid point about all of us working together to stop environmental destruction and the comment was removed from http://macdailynews.com/2013/10/03/sanctions-loom-large-samsung-may-have-spied-on-sealed-apple-nokia-documents-to-aid-patent-deals/ so I considered this censorship by MDN. If this was a mistake (site glitch) then my apologies. MDN is one of 10 bookmarked sites that I visit and I have been a faithful reader.
you misspelled misspelled.
Exactly what value is your little toddler tantrum adding to the discussion here?
MDN: “Join The Electronic Frontier Foundation in calling for a full congressional investigation ”
I wouldn’t trust congress to conduct an investigation
It depends on whether or not Congress’s corporate masters agree to allow the investigation. You do understand we live in a Plutocracy now, don’t you?
God bless Snowden and Levison! Patriots all the way.
Snowden ≠ ‘patriot’.
When you see something Unconstitutional cross your desk, aren’t you obligated, as an American, to expose this Unconstitutional act?
by giving US secrets to out of control reporters? F no…
… significant question: WHO is at risk of WHAT by these revelations? It is my understanding that the content released by Snowden (AND Manning) are proof that Americans were not acting in a manner congruent with “truth, honor, and the American Way”. It was tagged “Secret” because it was embarrassing! If you are doing “Right”, you don’t need secrecy. If you are snooping into the private matters of private Americans (Snowden) or killing unarmed non-combattents (Manning), you damned well DESERVE to be outed.
You realize of course that things like military plans, missile launch codes, and diplomatic cables need some form of security
And how is that relevant to the discussion of the NSA and the US government spying wholesale on ALL American citizens?
it isn’t.
You ≠ Decent human being.
To be correct, it is not 9/11, it is 2000′ elections. Because the first bulk surveillance started as soon as Bush came to office, in Feburary of 2001:
Silly uninformed human. Unwarranted surveillance of the American people started long ago. Hell if you want to get technical, as soon as the government realized they could tap into telegraph lines they were monitoring private communications.
Move up into the 1960s. Information about U.S. COMINT (communications intelligence) under the code name “Echelon” was first disclosed in reports from Australia if I remember correctly but it is over 50 years old.
If you want to read up on a chilling abuse of government spying, ready about how the FBI spied on Martin Luther King, Jr. under the Kennedy Administration, and subsequently sent him notes threatening him with the release of audio tapes of him having sex.
Move on up to the “War on Terror.”
January 12, 2006
Under Clinton, NY Times called surveillance “a necessity”
The controversy following revelations that U.S. intelligence agencies have monitored suspected terrorist related communications since 9/11 reflects a severe case of selective amnesia by the New York Times and other media opponents of President Bush. They certainly didn’t show the same outrage when a much more invasive and indiscriminate domestic surveillance program came to light during the Clinton administration in the 1990’s. At that time, the Times called the surveillance ‘a necessity.’
‘If you made a phone call today or sent an e—mail to a friend, there’s a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country’s largest intelligence agency.’ (Steve Kroft, CBS’ 60 Minutes)
Those words were aired on February 27, 2000 to describe the National Security Agency and an electronic surveillance program called Echelon whose mission, according to Kroft,
‘is to eavesdrop on enemies of the state: foreign countries, terrorist groups and drug cartels. But in the process, Echelon’s computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.’
“Blaming Bush” (the political hobby of the hopelessly naive) is particularly humorous when it comes to the government spying on the American people. It all started long before Bush. Either one.
The really fascinating thing is that only now are people finally starting to get upset about it.
There are no cases of NSA forcing companies to make bulk spying before 2001. So while Kroft might be correct, there are no documents/leaks on this from neither of countries which are part of Echelon.
The reason there were few cases of companies being “forced” to assist the government is that the government didn’t need help! It was EASY! There was no widespread use of powerful encryption technology. There was no Internet to speak of. You didn’t need keys because there were no locks.
By the way, do you not remember the Clipper Chip and Vince Foster and that whole shit storm?
Back In 1993 the Clipper chip was a chipset that was developed and promoted by the U.S. National Security Agency as a kleptographic encryption device to be adopted by telecommunications companies for voice transmission.
This was another little darling project promoted by Bill and Hillary.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/12/magazine/battle-of-the-clipper-chip.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
This is right around the beginnings of when the government started getting pushy because we were starting to talk amongst ourselves without them being able to listen in.
http://www.lp.org/issues/resolutions/clipper-chip
“…WHEREAS by adopting the Clipper chip system for the government and for companies doing business with the government and by re-affirming the embargo on robust encryption devices, the Clinton administration plans to induce American manufacturers to install government-readable encryption devices in every telephone, facsimile machine, and computer modem made in the United States; …”
It didn’t break on 9/11. It was already broken. 9/11 just made more of what the NSA was doing legal.
You guys fret too much! The Fascist Republicans (that is in contrast to Socialist Democrats) have this all under control – well except for the part where they continue to get paid – they are shutting down the government. No government, no one to snoop. Brilliant strategy! Far better than fixing flawed laws — just eliminate anyone to enforce them! Brilliant I say!
I think it’s more like fascist liberals these days, though clueless hidebound conservatives would be appropriate.
The NSA keeps telling us that their systems won’t be used against US citizens. Was Snowden foreign?
The NSA has devices connected to all the major backbone hubs of the internet, which hoover up EVERYTHING. They have access to everything electronic, without limit. Plus, they force everyone who knows this to either say nothing about it or lie to the public. This is what OBL did to us, and we happily agreed to it.
Everything the NSA does has been OK’d by our representatives in Congress. This is why voting matters. Duh.
Wow, a man of principle shuts down his business rather than cave in to the new gestapo. There are not many men of principle in the world today. A hero in my book.
The real terror comes from within…
It gives me hope to see that people like Mr. Levison still exist in this world.
last i looked, we are not a police state. you don’t have rights to my panty drawer. you don’t have rights to slip you hand down my bra. you don’t have rights to come into my house and open my bathroom closet. get out of my accounts. get out of my personal life. if you persist, i will have no choice but to confine you as a constitutional combatant to a dark, dark, dark place, you megalomaniacs .
I knew that I was in the wrong state! /joke
Here is an online Flipboard Magazine from The Guardian – no app needed – that wraps all this in one nice package.
https://flipboard.com/section/the-nsa-files-b1QMY3
BTW- Flipboard is an excellent app developed 1st on iOS.
This is about as effective as paying a $100,000 fine in quarters. Closing down the company does not prevent hi from having to comply with the search warrant. The government is going to want that information for communications already made anyway, or they’ll just serve whatever new company he starts up.
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