And yet, here we are in a situation where the court order existed and was valid, and Lavabit refused to comply.
And what if openness and debate is what causes the damage, and that damage is greater than the potential damage that the surveillance would do? Isn’t there a moral obligation to consider that?
Sure, the government could do anything it wants. But it doesn’t. I’m not comfortable with hamstringing the entire security apparatus for fear of what-ifs.
No, because it’s a self-serving lie presented without evidence, as an excuse for never providing evidence for this claim. It’s the political Pascal’s Wager.
Three smears in one sentence. How very efficient of you.
Identify the specific court order in question, or confess that you’re just making shit up.
Openness and debate is certainly causing damage to you, as it is exposing the fact that your argument is nonsense piled on foolishness piled on falsehood.
A little chartreuse man with lime green polka dots just told me that he will disintegrate the Earth if you don’t fess up to aiding and abetting ignorance, in contravention to this site’s mission. As this statement has as much factual and logical foundation as your assertions, you have as much moral obligation to consider it as the rest of us do to accept your invitation. Actually, you have a greater moral obligation, as my argument, unlike yours, does not require abandoning all limitations on government power.
Fortunately, the Constitution was written by people who were perfectly comfortable with limiting the power of the state for fear of the all-too-well known and verified results of failure to do so.
Actually, Smapti’s argument is much weaker than Pascal’s Wager. Pascal’s Wager posited the possibility of unlimited gain (salvation) in exchange for limited sacrifice (obeying the particular rules that had been set out by the Church); Smapti offers limited gain (safety… for the moment… maybe) in exchange for unlimited sacrifie (obeying any and all demands the security state might issue).
It doesn’t boggle mine. Perhaps I’m just more cynical, or perhaps through some odd form of empathy I find it easier to understand that some people are doomed to spend their lives whimpering in fear.
Did you not read the first sentence of the article that was linked above?
If the Founding Fathers had had to deal with the internet, maybe they’d have thought differently.
I fear the people my government is protecting me from a lot more than I fear my government.
Did you not read your own statement as you typed it?
You need to cite a court order that meets that description, not any old court order. This one fails on both counts:
the court order existed and was valid: Given the gag order, this is impossible to verify. What limited information we have indicates that the order was precisely the sort of “general warrant” [PDF] the Fourth Amendment was written to prohibit.
Lavabit refused to comply: As clearly stated in the linked article, the shutdown of the company occurred because compliance with the order was incompatible with the company’s privacy services. Had it refused to comply, there would have been no occasion to shut down.
Speculation based on no factual foundation whatsoever? :dubious::rolleyes: Are you still wondering why you haven’t convinced a single person that there is any merit to your argument?
I suppose that a blatant attempt to smuggle your desired conclusion into the wording of your thesis is the next illogical step.
Now that we have another thread to address Smapti’s complaints about whistleblowing and privacy, maybe we can get back to the actual question posed in the title of this one.
The Key Points:
Several new technologies and a new technique (the dead-man switch notification message) have been proposed, improving upon the Lavabit arrangement.
The legal basis of these new techniques is most secure if they are implemented from scratch. For instance, it’s better to have always had a zero-knowledge system from Day One rather than implementing it later and erasing the no-longer-needed customer information, and it’s better to post a dead-man message the moment your system first comes online – that way, nobody can accuse you of taking those steps in response to an existing government inquiry, removing any rational basis for an accusation of “obstructionism”.
The Conclusion: Yes, it was best for Lavabit to shut down, so that new and improved privacy systems could be built on a firmer foundation from the ground up.
New Development: The TrueCrypt project has suddenly shut down in a sudden and unusual manner, raising suspicions that it’s another case of shutdown to prevent government interference.
Or a discovery of previous government interference.
That seems unlikely given that the source code has routinely been available and that the first stage of a security audit revealed no major problems. That said, it can’t be categorically ruled out.
Another possibility is some sort of internal blowup on the development team led to an Eric Cartman “screw this I’m outta here” moment from someone with editing access to the project website. Since the team is anonymous, there’s no way to really gauge the likelihood of this scenario.