Lavabit and the Strong Arm of Big Brother USA

16 Comments

1. 

   Oui on August 9, 2013 at 5:05 pm

   .

   First Lavabit, now Silent Circle: Another U.S. secure email service closes to protect users

   (Gigaom) – Silent Circle, the provider of a range of secure communications services, has pre-emptively closed its Silent Mail email service in order to stop U.S. authorities from spying on its customers. The closures strongly suggest that secure hosted email services cannot be sited in the U.S. without being compelled to compromise users’ privacy if asked to do so by the authorities there.  

   Pre-emptive measure

   The National Harbor, M.D.-based Silent Circle team said in their blog post that no-one had contacted them in this way, but they could “see the writing on the wall”. Silent Circle’s remaining services include secure phone, video and text facilities, largely aimed at enterprise mobile users, that can boast full end-to-end encryption. Unless someone has managed to break this encryption — unlikely albeit not impossible — these are genuinely secure services that leave no traces for the FBI or NSA to requisition. The authorities can’t even go after the encryption keys, because these are stored on the users’ devices.

   Link:

   Kim Dotcom @KimDotcom  
   #Mega’s open encrypted email service outside of #NSA reach will
   change the way people use email forever. You’ll see. Coming 2014.

   Obama touts NSA privacy safeguards at press conference – live

   • Wapo’s Ezra Klein in “Edward Snowden, patriot”
2. 

   shergald on August 10, 2013 at 12:31 am

   Careful not to post or cross-post any diaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at European Tribune, Oui. The influence of Israeli propaganda over there is even stronger than the influence of AIPAC/Israel Lobby on the Daily Kos. The censorship is blatant and banning is the weapon of choice.

   The only redeeming value on this issue is that ET is an extremely small site, not even a fifth of Booman’s daily seekers.

   • 

     Oui on August 10, 2013 at 1:21 am

     I’m well aware, memory like an elephant. Bloggers here at the pond are not overly appreciative of the topics and diaries I write about Syria and Egypt. Probabily too much criticism of Obama’s (and H. Clinton) foreign policy. If it wasn’t for your individual recommends, I would have stopped many moons ago.

     Much appreciated … I think.  🙂

     This diary @ET got quickly 4 recommends and additional comments. Here @Booman, readers and commenters don’t write diaries. On international issues a pretty empty place, a pity. I have started to comment at Tikun Olam on ME issues.

     • 

       shergald on August 10, 2013 at 10:01 am

       My recommends are just tokens of appreciation for all the work, the research, you do keeping the rest of us apprised of ongoings in the ME and other places. But I do believe that you probably have many more readers, followers, than you think. The site meter reads, for the past week, in the slow summer time, over 4,600 daily visitors. Not everyone takes the time.

       So please keep it up.

       • 

         shergald on August 10, 2013 at 10:15 am

         PS: If you want to expand your audience, Oui, you might try cross-posting at FireDogLake, FDL. Smaller than Daily Kos, FDL is at least ten times larger than Booman and of course, ET, and ME diaries are welcome.

         http://my.firedoglake.com/

     • 

       Don Durito on August 11, 2013 at 5:43 pm

       Your diaries and Frank Schnittger’s are truly unsung treasures here. I hope the both of you continue to have the patience to share your insights.

       • 

         shergald on August 11, 2013 at 10:34 pm

         I get a lot of my information on topics of interest to me from Oui’s commentary and collated feed or sources. Hope that he continues with it. I also suggested to him that he expand his cross-posting avenues. FDL has Tuttle performing a similar function, but he only posts about every two weeks.

       • 

         Oui on August 12, 2013 at 10:42 am

         Thank you Don!

         This is my home, the pond [used to be] a warm and welcoming community. I put in a lot of effort
         in my diaries, it’s a shame when they go by the wayside with few or no comments.

         The human rights abuse global and across the Middle-East begs to be covered. My last hope for peace is John Kerry
         and his initiative. Apparently he has ruffeled some feathers in Israel and split the Netanyahu cabinet members.

3. 

   Oui on August 10, 2013 at 11:17 am

   .
   I expect the American people will realize the present situation of expanded surveillance under the Patriot Act breaches the US Constitution. Obama may try to manage the damage, but with the flight of Snowden he has lost all control. How the White House has handled the issue will get more criticism, hurt Obama’s popularity rating and challenges the Democrats in the midterm-election of 2014.

   Obama’s Reassurances about Domestic Surveillance are not Reassuring

   (Informed Comment) – President Obama gave a news conference on Friday in which he addressed the controversy over Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding NSA spying on the American people.

   …
   Among the more shameful episodes in the Obama presidency has been his vindictiveness toward whistleblowers and his and Eric Holder’s eagerness to use the fascistic 1917 Espionage Act against them. Seymour Hersh, who provoked the last big reforms of US intelligence, would have been charged with espionage by Barack Obama and would either have been executed or would have been given life in prison. In this regard, Obama’s record is worse than Nixon’s.

   The 1917 Espionage Act was enacted just after the US went to war with Imperial Germany. It was twinned with a Sedition Act a year later, as this site explains: “Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it a federal offense to use “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the Constitution, the government, the American uniform, or the flag. The government prosecuted over 2,100 people under these acts.”

   In other words, the Espionage Act deployed against Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden is a manifestation of war fever and nationalist fascism from the early 20th century, and likely is unconstitutional, just as most of the Sedition Act has been ruled to be. It does not speak well of Mr. Obama that he is using this sort of tool to govern.

   Mr. Obama at one point in his press conference called on Edward Snowden to come back to the United States and argue his case. I mean, really. This kind of disinformation and grandstanding can’t possibly be necessary, even given the constraints mentioned at the beginning of this essay. Mr. Obama knows very well that if Snowden returned to the US, we would never ever hear from him ever again. He’d go straight to a maximum security prison for the rest of his days on earth and die there.

   Bradley Manning was held at a brig by the Marines and was falsely declared a suicide risk so that he could be tortured by being chained naked to his bed for a year and woken up several times a night (sleep deprivation is a torture tactic, as is humiliation via making a prisoner nude. These same techniques were used by the US military on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib). There is no reason to believe that Snowden would be treated better. Note that Obama’s own spokesman, P. J. Crowley, publicly criticized Manning’s treatment and was fired for it. Obama had been in a position to stop the torture but did not.

   [Links added are mine – Oui]

   Under Obama, we have been subjected to a Patriot Act on steroids – 2012

   See my diary – Whistleblower Protection Under US Constitution In 1778.

   • 

     Marie2 on August 10, 2013 at 11:37 am

     Obama is like Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover rolled into one.  Locking up Eugene Debs put an end to the socialist/progressive era a hundred years ago.  Would have stayed dead if not for the subsequent twelve year reign of Republicans that trashed the economy and the brand for a generation.

     • 

       Arthur Gilroy on August 10, 2013 at 11:49 am

       The more things stay the same the more the controllers say that they have changed.

       Or…something like that…

       It all gets so confusing sometimes!!!

       Oh well.

       Nevermind.

       I guess that’s what they want, right?

       

       Right!!!

       Yore freind…

       Emily Litella

       • 

         Marie2 on August 10, 2013 at 12:01 pm

         The level of historic knowledge in this country has become so pathetic that a majority can buy into Obama’s “looking forward and not back” when it’s closer to “back to the future” without the New Deal, Hitler, and Stalin.

4. 

   Arthur Gilroy on August 10, 2013 at 11:45 am

   I just posted an article here titled The Obama/Snowden Affair-Obama Attempts To Get Out From Under. It speaks about Obama’s new media push regarding “controlling” the whole surveillance thing and what a piece of political media garbage it really is. One side of the PermaGov mouth says “OH yes!!! We’re gonna fix the problem!!!” while all of its other sides try to close the few remaining meager holes that have been available to people who wanted to publicize the real seriousness of what is happening.  (Holes that have also been available to others who were simply trying to keep their own personal privacy intact in the  face of massive intrusion by the government.)

   Thank you for your efforts, Oui, and please keep the pressure up any way you can. Every little bit helps. I am beginning to believe that the next two elections…2014 and possibly/hopefully 2016 …will hinge on this problem if it manages to remain in the consciousness of American voters despite the undoubtedly huge media push against its seriousness that will appear in the GMC…The Government Media Complex…over the coming weeks, months and years.

   Keep on keepin’ on.

   Later…

   AG

   P.S. “The GMC”/”The Government Media Complex”…thank you, Ron Paul. He does know how to turn a phrase, doesn’t he? The truth often helps in those phrasing matters, bet on it. Lies usually have a sort of clunky sound to them if you have good ears but the sounds/syntax of the truth often soar way above all of the usual lying bullshit.

   From another free info guy:

   If you can’t say “fuck,” you can’t say “fuck the government.”-Lenny Bruce

   Like dat!!!

5. 

   Oui on August 13, 2013 at 6:12 pm

   .

   Glenn Greenwald’s partner, doc filmmaker Laura Poitras

   “‘You’re flagged. You have a threat score that is off the Richter scale. You are at 400 out of 400.’ I said, ‘Is this a scoring system that works throughout all of Europe, or is this an American scoring system?’ He said. ‘No, this is your government that has this and has told us to stop you.'”

   Meet Laura Poitras

6. 

   Oui on August 14, 2013 at 3:31 am

   .

   Democracy Now Exclusive: Owner of Snowden’s Email Service on Why He Closed Lavabit Rather Than Comply With Gov’t

   AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald also wrote, “What is particularly creepy about the Lavabit self-shutdown is that the company is gagged by law even from discussing the legal challenges it has mounted and the court proceeding it has engaged. In other words, the American owner of the company believes his Constitutional rights and those of his customers are being violated by the US Government, but he is not allowed to talk about it.”

   Greenwald goes on to write, quote, “Just as is true for people who receive National Security Letters under the Patriot Act, Lavabit has been told [that] they would face serious criminal sanctions if they publicly discuss what is being done to their company.”

   LADAR LEVISON: Well, just to add one thing to Greenwald’s comments, I mean, there’s information that I can’t even share with my lawyer, let alone with the American public. So if we’re talking about secrecy, you know, it’s really been taken to the extreme. And I think it’s really being used by the current administration to cover up tactics that they may be ashamed of.

   Glenn Greenwald: Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down, warns against using US-based companies

   Lavabit’s Ladar Levison: ‘If You Knew What I Know About Email, You Might Not Use It’

   (Forbes) – Lavabit was created in 2004, in response to the Patriot Act, says Levison. He and friends from Southern Methodist University decided to create an email service by geeks for geeks. Levison was concerned that the FBI could send a company a national security letter (NSL) that would force them to turn over information about a customer without going through a court first. “I wanted to put myself in the position of not having information to turn over,” he said. “I didn’t want to be put in the position of compromising people’s privacy without due process.”

7. 

   Oui on August 14, 2013 at 7:03 am

   .
   Part of an earlier diary – Obama and the NSA Winning the War Against Journalists?.

   NZ disputes report that it spied on journalist

   The strongest evidence against the idea again comes from the AP, in the form of a partial admission from the New Zealand government — one that even the reporter for the Star-Times called “unsettling” to his story.

   New Zealand Defense Minister Jonathan Coleman acknowledged the existence of an embarrassing confidential order that lists investigative journalists alongside spies and terrorists as potential threats to New Zealand’s military. That document was leaked to Hager, who provided a copy to The Associated Press. Coleman said the order will be modified to remove references to journalists.

   He also said the New Zealand Defense Force had conducted an extensive search of its records over the weekend and had found no evidence that either it or any other agency had spied on Stephenson.

   This is one of the side effects of the Snowden revelations. There was a time when a flat denial by a government would be sufficient. Now, governments that are complicit in the NSA’s surveillance are far less likely to get the benefit of the doubt. And it may take some time before we learn if that skepticism is warranted.

   But please, please don’t spy on me – Murder Inc..

   Cases involving foreign spies from “friendly” countries are even more rare. It is a given that the US, Britain and Australia have Intelligence officers operating here, usually under diplomatic cover. But nothing has ever been done about them, even when there have been demonstrable instances of meddling in NZ’s internal political affairs, most notably by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Our “friends” the French went too far with the 1985 fatal bombing, in Auckland Harbour, of the Rainbow Warrior by its agents. Routine Police work and the sheer nosiness of ordinary Kiwis led to two of those agents being arrested, tried and imprisoned (and released in an indecently short time, as a result of crude political pressure applied by France). But that was the only previous occasion where foreign spies (not to mention bombers and killers) have been actually prosecuted.

    Until 2004. One of the sensations of last year was the unmasking of an Israeli Intelligence operation in Auckland, the arrest of two operatives of Mossad (that country’s external security agency), followed by their conviction, imprisonment and deportation. The whole scandal caused major outrage right across the NZ political spectrum; a diplomatic breach with Israel that remains unresolved, at the time of writing; and attracted media and political attention right around the world because of the blatant nature of the operation and the serious implications for Israel’s dealings with all other “friendly” nations.

   US and UK at first – later joined by Canada, New Zealand and Australia –  make up the the so-called “Five Eyes”

   I’m working on a new diary to illustrate Obama’s flawed thinking on whistleblowers and journalists and which advisors led to this new US trauma.