Thursday, August 08, 2013

The Lesson That The Owner Of Lavabit Has Learned.

AllTheAmendmentsThatNoLongerFit
IncludingTheFirstOneVille


Lavabit is a US-based Email service that purports to be more secure than those other commercial services that you and I most often use.

And, thus, it was, apparently, used by a fine fellow named Mr. Snowden.

And now it turns out that the owner of the service, Mr. Ladar Levison, has been 'forced' to pull the plug on the entire operation.

Essentially (and this looks like it is likely the real story), it would appear that Mr. Levison has chosen to shut his business down rather than fork over the personal data of his clientele.

Mr. Levison also says this:

"...This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States..."



Most interesting (and sad),  all that....

No?


_____
Will soon become a big story, I'm pretty sure...For the moment, there is more at Boing-Boing.....
As for companies trying to sell folks like you and me pieces of their 'cloud'?....Well....This.

.

5 comments:

West End Bob said...

against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States

Interesting and sad, indeed, but it's the way of The Excited States now, RossK. People need to adapt and avoid if at all possible.

I've given up on "The Google" search for Ixquick which doesn't track your searches. Have never joined the social media sites, thank goodness.

Still a Gmail user at this point after trying many free alternatives, however. None have the features or ease of the Google Boyz, tho. Any suggestions I might not have thought of - preferably out of the USian control?

RossK said...

Well Bob,

I guess 'Silent Circle' from the 'PGP' boys Janke and Zimmerman might be a good bet.

Oh...

Wait.

.

West End Bob said...

Good stuff from that linky, RossK - Thanks!

“Email that uses standard Internet protocols cannot have the same security guarantees that real-time communications has.” With too many opportunities for information and metadata leaks in the SMTP, POP3, and IMAP email protocols, the company believes there was no way to live up to its promise of total privacy.
_______________

At this point, the nation’s best hope for reform of spying practices might be making a case that it hurts the economy.


Looks like the Excited States government really can create high-paying tech jobs. Problem is, they'll be off-shore to avoid NSA snooping . . . .

Anonymous said...

Why should Verizon come to Canada?
Maybe this is why we need more cell companies?

From the Atlantic:

The federal government forced Verizon to turn over information on the phone calls of millions of innocent Americans and forbade them from telling anybody about it, The Guardian reports. Kudos to Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, and Spencer Ackerman for the impressive scoop, and for posting the evidence here.

Anonymous said...

Where's Seymour Hersh?

He hasn't published since the Spring.