Groklaw legal site shuts over fears of NSA email snooping

I hope those who treated me with scorn for suggesting the politicians and business people are effectively blackmailed by the mere existence of NSA type spying can now see it for real.<p>No direct threat, not conversation, no deals. Just the fear of the knowledge that one is being comprehensively watched, and what &quot;they&quot; might have. This fear is enough to alter behavior, to conform.<p>Again, at what stage can we describe the US and UK, and their co-conspirators as fascist, police state, oppressive, and so on?<p>Or, do we have micro targeted oppression? Is that the modern way?

This is a tragedy.<p>We need to reboot email. Encrypt everything, including metadata -- given current hardware, the client can easily bruteforce it from a list of known keys. Build some sort of easy key distribution tool (connecting via p2p, dns, whatever, just build a goddamn UI). Ask existing transports to relax their restrictions enough to let fully-encrypted mail through, and build some intelligent webmail interface for this (Mailpile, currently being kickstarted, is trying to do smt like that).<p>We&#x27;ve been dicking around with PGP since the 90s without making any real progress, we&#x27;ve traded security for convenience (GMail, Facebook), it&#x27;s time somebody reverts the trend.

We are at an interesting juncture of history. It seems like Snowden has accomplished what he set out do to: raise awareness of government abuse and bring about positive change. Initial fears after the NSA leaks seemed to be that the public would become outraged and then forget about it. Clearly, this is not happening. A more secure Internet is needed, and instances like this highlight that necessity.

Huh? I just don&#x27;t follow. Groklaw is not a site that depends on anonymous tips. The last few stories posted on Groklaw were on Apple vs Samsung and did not appear to require privileged confidential information.<p>How is it that other groups that do directly go against the government, such as the ACLU and the EFF, continue to do so without a paralyzingly fear that they can&#x27;t keep their communications secret? The logical implication from Pamela&#x27;s opinion is that these groups, by continuing to operate, are little more than a honeypot to be used against their clients.<p>That seems a bit overboard in defeatism.

Why not use DeadDrop[0] for leads&#x2F;sources? The New Yorker[1] seems to be the only notable publication using it.<p>PJ has shutdown before, I&#x27;m sure she&#x27;ll be back again.<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/deaddrop/deaddrop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;deaddrop&#x2F;deaddrop</a> [1] <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/strongbox/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;strongbox&#x2F;</a>

PJ&#x27;s (final) entry explaining why:<p><a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.groklaw.net&#x2F;article.php?story=20130818120421175</a><p>EDIT: Turns out there&#x27;s another thread here:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6242569" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6242569</a>

This is kind of silly. Just move the site offshore, and if you really have to get rid of email, have an SSL message form. Although I think there are good solutions for PGP and whatnot with email that encrypts it client side anyway.<p>I think this person is just technically illiterate and doesn&#x27;t understand. Pretty strange. I have a wife from China who hates tech, but she knows very well how to use an encrypted VPN to protect her communications and says it is common knowledge there.<p>This person seems to be lacking even US level common knowledge about protecting your information.

Something to keep in mind:<p><i>Privacy International criticised the climate that had led to Jones&#x27;s decision. &quot;The closing of Groklaw demonstrates how central the right to privacy is to free expression. The mere threat of surveillance is enough to [make people] self-censor&quot;, it said in a statement.</i>

Now more than ever is when we need sites like this. This all plays right into the government&#x27;s hands. They may as well keep it up because people are self-censoring and that makes their jobs easier.

I have a counter-current question (and I feel that this should be a legitimate site for asking such questions, because we are all hackers here).<p>Were lavabit, groklaw profitable and&#x2F;or widely popular?<p>Is it possible that these are sites that are not profitable and would have been shutdown anyway but which are now using privacy as an excuse for shutting down?<p>This does not excuse the misuse of governmental powers, but if it is true, it is a distraction (and a cynical manipulation of our views).

I call bullshit.<p>It&#x27;s almost impossible to argue that the public benefit of Groklaw is outweighed by the risk of the site receiving emails that will be exposed. Using the same position, every site on the internet should should shut down, people should stop sending all postal mail, using phones, and we should all go live in caves. This is really signaling surrender to the anti-freedom terrorists who occupy our national security department, and I think it&#x27;s counterproductive.<p>If I&#x27;d had to guess, Pamela was ready to stop publishing Groklaw and wanted to go out making a big statement about a major threat to our future. I can thank her for that, though I think the message is somewhat muddied by the grandstanding defeatism.

One of the Internet&#x27;s very best :( At this point I hope more follow. If anything that&#x27;s one way to make a stand. We just need one country&#x2F;countries to make a stand and allow security friendly regulation and start-ups will flock. Unfortunately it seems no country at this point could guarantee it and be strong enough to not succumb to pressure.

I just want to say that everytime a site like Groklaw -- whose main work was revealing how broken the <i>status quo</i> is (mostly with regard to tech IP law, in Groklaw&#x27;s case) and thereby creating pressure or exchange among interested parties to fix it -- shuts down, for whatever reason, the powers-that-be win.

well, if this keeps up, the NSA won&#x27;t have much internet to snoop. I think that these politicians need to stop taking months off and get some shit done.

Given the current furore I think it not unlikely that pj is under a national security letter and dare not talk about it for fear of arrest.<p>She is probably gambling that they will not threaten to arrest her for closing her site if she makes no statement.<p>She always seemed pretty ballsy and I think she still is.<p>Or maybe she just doesn&#x27;t want to be a journalist in America any more.<p>What do whistleblowers seek ? A journalist to leak to.<p>Imagine receiving a leak in America right now.<p>It would certainly be a BIG commitment and having received it, it might be too late to undo that action.<p>At the very least this is pre-emptive censorship - a chilling effect, but important in the Manufacturing of Consent.<p>What do you think would happern to Glen Greenwald if he were to step into a transit lounge right now ?<p>Nice of the White House to deny it.<p>Consent for what ? Well one might wonder...

I am very sad about Groklaw closing, but I understand perfectly how pj feels.<p>This is a sad day.

Hmm. A lot of people supposedly operated under the belief that an omnipotent, judgmental entity was watching their every move, in its own interests, to decide their eternal fate.<p>Turns out, a nearly omnipotent judgmental entity is watching a big handful of things, working in your interest, only looking for terrorism and national threats.<p>Suddenly faced with this kind of thing as a <i>reality</i> instead of just paying lip service to the idea, a lot of people... don&#x27;t like it.

Here is a simple idea. Make it known that our top election issue is removing the NSA&#x27;s (and others) tentacles from our daily lives. In addition we, the tech elite, will freely help candidates who share point of view and refuse to work with those that don&#x27;t.<p>The last election showed how important IT systems are. And while it may take a few election cycles we can certainly use that to our advantage.<p>Thoughts?

The chilling effects of the surveillance state.

So how we we achieve political change? As Charlie Stross points out, some very wrong has hijacked our political system:<p><a href="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/invaders-from-mars.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.antipope.org&#x2F;charlie&#x2F;blog-static&#x2F;2010&#x2F;12&#x2F;invaders...</a>

I think this might be part of a long term legal strategy to gain standing in order to sue. I&#x27;m sure a bright lawyer will be able to raise 1st and 4th Amendment issues and maybe even some takings claims. Lavabit and Groklaw would make great plaintiffs in a federal court case. Here&#x27;s hoping.

We need a whistleblower law.<p>A good one, like one that is embedded in the consitution that protects people from speaking out.

Fear. Shame. Doubt. These are the means by which the few control the many. 

Why can&#x27;t Groklaw use GPG?<p>I understand that it&#x27;s too complicated for my grandparents, but this is exactly the community that&#x27;d be willing to put up with a slight inconvenience to gain security.

It makes you wonder what people like Qmail&#x27;s D. J. Bernstein, make of all this, a self confessed cryptography expert with a hand in a widely used mail transfer agent.

Does that Groklaw logo on the Guardian have a CafePress watermark in the background?

This is not surprising since &quot;pj&quot; guards his privacy and anonymity. Two things the surveillance state doesn&#x27;t want you to have.

will this also lead to a mass exodus in HN users? given the ferocious posting in these threads will all those now also go offline?<p>will yc now only finance startups that deal with encryption and freedom rather than the next social&#x2F;local&#x2F;sticker thing? will elon musk create the hyperloop for freedom?

Just out of curiosity: What interest could the NSA possibly have in Groklaw mails?