Feds Threaten To Arrest Lavabit Founder for Closure

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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The latest fallout in the ongoing saga of Edward Snowden's NSA disclosure has come home to Lavabit. The service was shut down, denying Snowden a secure email service, and now the Feds want to prosecute the Lavabit founder for his actions.

“he made ‘the difficult decision’ to shut down Lavabit because he did not want "to become complicit in crimes against the American people."
 
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Once again, the United States Government is the largest criminal enterprise in the world. The arrogance of the Empire of the Corporations knows no bounds. Ladar Levison would be fully justified in using whatever force is necessary to defend himself.
 
Its against the law for him to shut down his service?

From what I read, if he had any evidence pertaining to Edward Snowden (his encrypted emails and anything related to those emails) on his servers and he shutdown the servers without turning them in, he is complicit in a crime and it is considered an offense.

By shutting down the servers, he is in a way destroying evidence.

That is how the federal government sees it in their eyes.
 
No. What the government is doing to him is against the law.

Its never against the laws when you can write the laws.

Look at Congress with Obamacare.

You're fucked by it, but them and their staffers, who we're talking make well into 6 figures, are getting up to 75% of all costs of their healthcare paid for, because as they put it "Obamacare was too expensive for us to pay for".

But you...yeah you're fucked.

Same with this guy.
 
Once again, the United States Government is the largest criminal enterprise in the world. The arrogance of the Empire of the Corporations knows no bounds. Ladar Levison would be fully justified in using whatever force is necessary to defend himself.

Pretty much. I'd guess, he was initially being requested with unrestricted access to his encryption and servers. When he didn't comply, the sh** hit the fan. So he shut down the service and now is facing repercussions.

These NSA gag orders are 100% complete and utter horsesh**. It's so they can do damage control and keep it out of the public eye. It's not a national security issue.
 
lol, so much handwringing fail

the republic is finished, get over it and move on
 
America: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness*

*Unless aforementioned goals usurp the needs of the overreaching bureaucracy that oppresses, intimidates and prosecutes any individual(s) that dares to pull back the curtain. Corporations that are 'to big to fail' are given carte blanche to overcharge, under-serve and pollute as they see fit.
 
"Land of the free, home of the brave" is now "land of the fee, home of the slave" -- we are all rapidly becoming slaves to the corporations and government bureaucracy.
 
I'm surprised there's no soap-boaxing by Rand Paul fanboys in this thread yet :p
 
There is a lot of gun in USA right? So what's the problem? Wish we had guns here...
 
I can only see that as an solution to this problem. The system will ride us forever if we don't stop it. So lets hope you are right. Bette soone then later.
 
I'm surprised there's no soap-boaxing by Rand Paul fanboys in this thread yet :p

There doesn't really need to be, when just about everyone in the thread can recognize how awful the overreach has become. ;)
 
Once again, the United States Government is the largest criminal enterprise in the world. The arrogance of the Empire of the Corporations knows no bounds. Ladar Levison would be fully justified in using whatever force is necessary to defend himself.

The government likes to pick off the thorns in its side one by one and make examples of them. Divided we fall, I guess.
 
America: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness*

*Unless aforementioned goals usurp the needs of the overreaching bureaucracy that oppresses, intimidates and prosecutes any individual(s) that dares to pull back the curtain. Corporations that are 'to big to fail' are given carte blanche to overcharge, under-serve and pollute as they see fit.

Well put and so true!
 
The most poignant point of the Manning and Snowden cases is that the government is CONSTANTLY telling us that the wholesale data it collects on every citizen is secure and incapable of being misused or misappropriated.

Yet, two 20 something year olds can have such unfettered access that they can not only view "Top Secret National Security Data", but duplicate it, and upload it for the world to see. But your data, it's safe.
 
From what I read, if he had any evidence pertaining to Edward Snowden (his encrypted emails and anything related to those emails) on his servers and he shutdown the servers without turning them in, he is complicit in a crime and it is considered an offense.

By shutting down the servers, he is in a way destroying evidence.

That is how the federal government sees it in their eyes.

BS... government lie. Shutting down servers does not destroy data, data the US Government has almost certainly already acquired from Lavabit via warrant.

What is going on here is the US Government wanted a blanket back door to all Lavabit e-mail past, current, and future. Levison would rather shut down that give them that so now the US Government is going to go into full bully mode and try and destroy Levison as a object lesson to anyone in the future who dare say no.
 
The most poignant point of the Manning and Snowden cases is that the government is CONSTANTLY telling us that the wholesale data it collects on every citizen is secure and incapable of being misused or misappropriated.

Yet, two 20 something year olds can have such unfettered access that they can not only view "Top Secret National Security Data", but duplicate it, and upload it for the world to see. But your data, it's safe.

If the government is telling the truth about our data being safe, the corrolary is that the data Manning and Snowden could access was inconsequential, because we still don't fully know about the vast majority of the data they keep on us.
 
If the government is telling the truth about our data being safe, the corrolary is that the data Manning and Snowden could access was inconsequential, because we still don't fully know about the vast majority of the data they keep on us.

The US Government is so incompetent that they cannot information from a lower level employee/contractor or they do have a vast amount of data they keep on us.

Either way I know I feel better knowing the US Government will now be keeping everyones health records.
 
This is an extremely dangerous situation. If they charge and convict him, that means that any company could be held criminally liable if their products or services are used by criminals.
 
Its against the law for him to shut down his service?

Well I'm guessing if you are court ordered to allow the government to spy on all of your customers and you close up shop, then you are no longer allowing the government to spy on your customers. So I'm guessing they are arguing contempt of court since if it's closed he cannot do their court ordered spying for them.
 
Don't expect ANY change whatsoever until this country does what the people in Egypt do.

Simple as that.
 
Don't expect ANY change whatsoever until this country does what the people in Egypt do.

Simple as that.

it needs someone to start. what about you? don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk :p
 
The worst part is that the Government continues to lie its ass off about how many laws its violated thanks to the exposure of two Government programs to spy on Americans and the internet as a whole.

If true legal action doesn't result from our rights being completely ignored or a massive shit storm isn't raised during the next mid term elections than I'm going to say that we are in the final step of a shit sandwich program we allowed to happy by voting in the various "yes men" into vital positions of our Government.

Bottom line : Vote for people that give a shit about actually serving public office and stop voting in greedy assholes that only want power and new ways to bend over the American citizen and butt fuck them into obedience.
 
As a male within the age group that could potentially suffer forced conscription, and more importantly a citizen of an increasingly unstable nation, each story like this makes me further explore my options. Unfortunately, options are slim and none are particularly inviting. Speaking of revolution and 'resetting the system' are all fine and good, but I simply don't see that happening. So long as bread is on the majority of tables, and so long as 'good citizens' are given their scapegoats to rat out (Snowden, Manning, terrorists, and such) the status quo will remain stable, even if the government becomes increasingly overbearing and privacy is eliminated. Simply put, by the time this does become too painful for the average person to bear, there will be 300 million chickens running headless with but wolves left to lead them. It's frustrating and depressing, but as Rome and Greece (and so many other empires) fell before, so to may this nation.

As for my search of other potential nations? The stark reality is that should the US fail, so too does the world. We've become so interdependent upon each other, and the world upon the massive number of people and their dollars that flow out of the US. I simply don't see a state stable or self sufficient enough to survive such a massive blowout. The solution to the problem eludes me. Or, more accurately, it haunts me like the Kobayashi Maru, with no solution without great loss.
 
We the NSA can no longer skim data when a email server is shut down so what you have done is against the law. How are we supposed to read all the emails when the email service is shut down. We are the angries.
 
My thoughts, since I have no idea what legal actions occurred, so it's just a guess and opinion:

For the government to prosecute anyone on destruction of evidence, they would have to have a court ordered warrant demanding the specific evidence beforehand, and by specific, it would have to describe the data they are looking for and any data gathered outside of the purpose of the order would have to be discarded.

This sounds like the government wanted to go on a fishing expedition and they are mad because the boat was sunk before they made reservations.
 
As a male within the age group that could potentially suffer forced conscription, and more importantly a citizen of an increasingly unstable nation, each story like this makes me further explore my options. Unfortunately, options are slim and none are particularly inviting. Speaking of revolution and 'resetting the system' are all fine and good, but I simply don't see that happening. So long as bread is on the majority of tables, and so long as 'good citizens' are given their scapegoats to rat out (Snowden, Manning, terrorists, and such) the status quo will remain stable, even if the government becomes increasingly overbearing and privacy is eliminated. Simply put, by the time this does become too painful for the average person to bear, there will be 300 million chickens running headless with but wolves left to lead them. It's frustrating and depressing, but as Rome and Greece (and so many other empires) fell before, so to may this nation.

As for my search of other potential nations? The stark reality is that should the US fail, so too does the world. We've become so interdependent upon each other, and the world upon the massive number of people and their dollars that flow out of the US. I simply don't see a state stable or self sufficient enough to survive such a massive blowout. The solution to the problem eludes me. Or, more accurately, it haunts me like the Kobayashi Maru, with no solution without great loss.

The best solution possible is unlikely. It would take a great President with aid from congress to reverse the damage done.
 
So I guess we're the bad guys now huh? It was a good run convincing myself the opposite, but I can't keep up the charade any longer.
 
The best solution possible is unlikely. It would take a great President with aid from congress to reverse the damage done.

The problem is, it couldn't be merely one president. It would take decades of reversals to fix the decades of corruption. And each step would be caught in the quagmires of the DoJ, with circuit courts going every which way in their decisions.
 
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