Edward Snowden’s Email Provider Shuts Down Amid Secret Court Battle

&quot;Court records show that, in June, Lavabit complied with a routine search warrant targeting a child pornography suspect in a federal case in Maryland. That suggests that Levison isn’t a privacy absolutist. Whatever compelled him to shut down now must have been exceptional.&quot;<p>Wow. Now I&#x27;m even more interested at what the NSL&#x2F;court order was looking for here.

TL,DR: &quot;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.&quot;

So for those of you wondering about Jury nullification, the way it would work in this case is that Levison would reveal that the NSA was hounding him with NSL letters, they would charge him with violating the terms of the NSL and the jury would acquit him anyway.<p>I hope we can get a case like that to move that aspect of the conversation forward. It helped get bad laws off the books in the civil rights cases and it would help here.

Extensive discussion here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6181081" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6181081</a> and here <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6180846" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6180846</a>.

Distributed cryptography&#x2F;services in multiple jurisdictions is the only permanent solution or as a delaying tactic at a minimum. Where keys or parts of data or multiple onion style encryption rests in a chain of services distributed globally in multiple jurisdictions. Something like the Ceph file system but for everything.

So, since HN is filled with smart engineers, how should one build a sustainable, fully encrypted email service untouchable by the Feds?

If you are looking for an alternative to Lavabit, try RiseUp [1].<p>There is a nice read in their &quot;About Us&quot; page [2]<p>[1] - <a href="https://riseup.net/en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;riseup.net&#x2F;en</a><p>[2] - <a href="https://help.riseup.net/en/about-us" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.riseup.net&#x2F;en&#x2F;about-us</a><p>Added:<p>Though, it is based in Seattle, so what happened to Lavabit can happen to them too, unfortuneately.

So what happens if this guy starts telling people what happened in that courtroom? He gets arrested? What happened to freedom of speech?

&quot;<i>after</i> secret court battle&quot;?<p>I got the impression the court battle hasn&#x27;t started yet over this. Or is he talking about that child porn subpoena? But the headline is confusing.

Do not use webapps.