Lavabit

The True Story Behind Edward Snowden’s Email Service Provider Lavabit

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A month ago, the tech world was abuzz with news that Ladar Levison decided to shutter his encrypted email service Lavabit, rather than betray the trust of his clients by selling out their privacy to the U.S. government. The writing was on the wall, and shortly thereafter another encrypted email service, Silent Circle, made a similar decision to shutdown.

Well two months later we finally have some more information about what went down behind the scenes, all of which demonstrate the true American hero that Mr. Levison really is. He can now talk about the events leading up to the shut down of Lavabit and redacted versions of the court pleadings are available online. Yesterday, Wired published an article detailing some of what we have learned. Kevin Poulsen writes:

U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan immediately ordered Lavabit to comply, threatening Levison with criminal contempt — which could have potentially put him in jail.

By July 9, Lavabit still hadn’t defeated its security for the government, and prosecutors asked for a summons to be served for Lavabit, and founder Ladar Levison, to be held in contempt “for its disobedience and resistance to these lawful orders.”

The judge also rejected Lavabit’s motion to unseal the record. “This is an ongoing criminal investigation, and there’s no leeway to disclose any information about it.”

In an interesting work-around, Levison complied the next day by turning over the private SSL keys as an 11 page printout in 4-point type. The government, not unreasonably, called the printout “illegible.”

Freakin’ awesome.

“To make use of these keys, the FBI would have to manually input all 2,560 characters, and one incorrect keystroke in this laborious process would render the FBI collection system incapable of collecting decrypted data,” prosecutors wrote.

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An Excellent Interview with PGP Creator and Silent Circle Co-Founder Phil Zimmermann

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We need to take an objective look at the damage since 9/11 and that would take into account self-inflicted wounds. The harm we have done to our society has come as a reaction to 9/11. The cost includes our expectations of our legal system and our civil liberties. I don’t think it is a partisan issue. We need to push back against this tide of surveillance. In my case, I create technology, so I do things that allow me to apply my skills and part of that is to develop technology tools that push back against a small subset of that problem.

– Phil Zimmerman

Om Malik of Gigaom has just released an excellent interview with Phil Zimmermann, the creator of PGP and co-founder of Silent Circle. In case you missed it, Silent Circle made the preemptive decision to shut down its encrypted email service last week after the Feds went after Lavabit. What follows is a real treat, a philosophical and pragmatic discussion with one of the most aware and knowledge observers in this crucial debate. From Gigaom:

Phil Zimmermann might be a technologist, but he tends to get philosophical when it comes to the issues of privacy and security and how they intersect with our society. A cryptographer, in 1991, he created Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), an email encryption software and published it for free on the internet. Since then he has become an eloquent proponent for the need for privacy and tools. Zimmermann has had his run-ins with the authorities in the past, but he is widely respected for his views on cryptography and privacy — one of the reasons why he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame and has been a recipient of multiple awards recognizing his achievements.

The spotlight fell on Zimmermann again this week when Silent Circle, a secure-private communications company he co-founded, decided to suspend its Silent Mail service amid fears of future government interference. That action followed on the heels of a decision by another secure and private email service provider, Lavabit, to shut down operations.

Om Malik: We suddenly find ourselves in a very confusing landscape, grappling with the enormity and speed of changes. I was wondering if you could try and make sense of this post-Snowden world and what it means for the long term.

Phil Zimmermann: The surveillance landscape is far worse than it has ever been and I feel like everything we do is now observable. All of our transactions and communications are all fused together into total information awareness apparatus. I don’t think any of this can be fixed merely by the application of cryptography. It is going to require some push back in the policy space. We are going to have to have Congress react to this and we need to get the population to react, perhaps through the economic consequences we face of losing a lot of business for American internet companies. Maybe American internet companies can push back because of economic harm that comes with the rest of world turning its back on us.

If China was to intercept our phone calls, I wouldn’t like that but I wouldn’t worry that Chinese authorities would bang on my door and haul me to prison because I don’t live in China. So when a government turns its powerful surveillance tools on its people, it has impact on the political opposition within the country. The power of incumbency becomes greater and opportunities for the democratic process become less and are undermined.

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Another One Bites the Dust: Silent Circle Shuts Down Encrypted Email Service

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There are some very high profile people on Silent Circle—and I mean very targeted people—as well as heads of state, human rights groups, reporters, special operations units from many countries. We wanted to be proactive because we knew USG would come after us due to the sheer amount of people who use us—let alone the “highly targeted high profile people.” So to protect everyone and to drive them to use the other three peer to peer products- we made the decision to do this before men on [SIC] suits show up. Now—they are completely shut down—nothing they can get from us or try and force from us- we literally have nothing anywhere.

– Michael Janke, CEO of Silent Circle

The recent big news in the tech world was that Lavabit, the encrypted email service used by Edward Snowden to communicate, was forced to shutdown by the U.S. government. In typical American gulag fashion, Lavabit was not permitted to tell the world about their six week battle with the “authorities” and the specifics related to the shutdown. While some of you may take this development negatively, I would argue it is all just part of the natural process of system change outlined by Gandhi, a master of the process. He said:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

We are merely in the fight phase. This is thanks to the Edward Snowden leaks, which made the “ignore and ridicule” phase no longer possible. It’s becoming increasingly obvious which side is winning, which is why the establishment is showing such desperation. Even back in June, polls showed that Edward Snowden was far more popular than both Barack Obama and Congress.

More on the Silent Circle drama from ArsTechnica:

Less than 24 hours after Lavabit shuttered its doors, another US firm is shutting down its encrypted e-mail service.

Silent Circle, a company that specializes in encrypted communications, said it is preemptively turning off its Silent Mail product. It’s doing so despite no urging at all from the government—no subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else, company co-founder Jon Callas wrote in a blog post today. “We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now.”

Company CEO Michael Janke told TechCrunch that given his user base, he knew the government was going to come after them sooner or later:

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