Can someone weight in on what this means or why it is an issue?
Related article:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/how-l...
It's a shame the government didn't work with Levison to either allow Levison to add the requested intercept himself (which, yes, would have required Uncle Sam to trust him) or to allow a third-party (or even a third party requested from both sides) to audit the proposed interception code.
The judge is correct in stating that if Levison doesn't trust the government, then why should the government trust Levison, but Levison is clearly correct when he notes that giving up his SSL private keys would destroy the security of his whole infrastructure.
The government would have been far better off by allowing a service like Lavabit to exist with the cooperation of an activist citizen than to force him to either harm all of his customers or shutdown the service. Somehow I don't think the D.A. here realized how serious many civil libertarians are.
Props on Levison for trying to stick it out in the U.S. and make things better from within!
The judge is incorrect. The U.S. Government was designed to not completely trust itself. That's why there are checks and balances. Giving the FBI the private key lets them have unchecked access to data encrypted with it. It is wrong to asked to not be checked.
[edited for format]
No - it is a plan that the government doesn't work with service provider and instead demands data and intercepts that "just happen" to let them spy on an entire network.
Indeed, everything Edward Snowden has revealed points this being the plan, the modus operandi of the state everywhere. It has an official right a few reasonable seeming things and executes that right in a way that gives it the potential for anything and everything.
And it can all just look like a "shame", a mistake, "an example of how the government doesn't understand the Internet", etc.
It's interesting that you attack the FBI when you hear them make an unsubstantiated claim, but you have no problem repeating claims you heard on internet forums. When you make claims like this with certainty, it weakens your position and reveals that you don't know what you're talking about.
Mr. "Shill".
I hope that any careful reader notices your entire post actual has no relation at all to the text my post above it (FBI unmentioned, while I'm sure they make unsubstantiated claims, I'm not commenting on the state's claim above, those "Internet forum" apparently exist in your imagination only too, etc). Such a reader might also notice your post follows a rather predicable rhetorical strategy. Perhaps there is an experiment going on.
- give me your bank password so i can get the $5 you own me.
- why dont i give you a check for $5?
- so i have to trust your check is good but you cant trust me with your bank password?
see? it is just crazy talk to push him around. the judge knows here his/her obedience rests. he is not even listening to the defense.
- You owe me $25
- I only keep my money in bitcoin
- Well, I don't do that bitcoin thing, and I don't really want to set a whole thing just to transfer the money
- OK, I could get it for you in cash, but you'll have to give me a few days
...a few days later
- Uhh...so about that money
- Oh, haven't gotten around to transferring that
- OK, but I could use it. Or, I could borrow your phone and talk to Steve: he'll trade me cash for bitcoin.
- But then you could take all of my bitcoins.
- I'm not going to do that
- But I can't trust you
- Then why should I trust you to pay me?
This doesn't make any sense -- it's not symmetrical. The gov't should trust Levison they same reason we trust anyone that testifies in court. The power of the criminal justice system punishes those that are caught lying. Mr Levison has no recourse if the Gov't lies to him. He has a very strong incentive to carry out the modifications that they ask for to avoid fines and jail time if he lies about them. I'm sure they'd tack on "aid and abet" if he covered up any evidence.
They did. See the unsealed orders (http://cryptome.org/2013/10/lavabit-orders.pdf) The original order from 6/10 only compelled the production of a bunch of metadata from a single specific, named account (see page 4 of the PDF).
There was then an order to compel (basically: "We mean it, don't yank our chain") on 6/28 because earlier that day, FBI agents met with him (according to a later motion) and, quote, "Mr Levison told the agents that he would not comply with the pen register order and wanted to speak to an attorney."
After that order was issued, the FBI claims it "made numerous attempts, without success to speak and meet directly with Mr. Levison to discuss the pen register order and his failure to provide [the specific data requested in the original subpoena]."
It wasn't until 7/9, a month after the original order was served, that they then demanded the production of his SSL keys.