More on the NSA Commandeering the Internet

I know nothing of Lavabit, but let&#x27;s say he did comply with the order and then months or years later the company simply isn&#x27;t profitable and he needs to shut it down. Could he shut it down then? Or would he suddenly find himself hosting lots of paid government accounts - enough to make it financially viable? (But define viable... Does &quot;I&#x27;m not pocketing $1m&#x2F;year from this business, so I don&#x27;t care any more. Turn it off!&quot; count?)<p>Could he sell the business? If so, at what point does the new owner get to find out they have extra non-negotiable obligations to the government?

&quot;Once they do that, you no longer control that part of your business. You can&#x27;t shut it down. You can&#x27;t terminate part of your service. In a very real sense, it is not your business anymore.&quot;<p>Totalitarianism.

I feel like we&#x27;ve identified this problem to death.<p>I think now the real question is, as an internet community, what are we going to do about it?<p>Are we going to build something that &#x27;routes around&#x27; this? Are we going to protest? Or are we just going to keep identifying the problem and complaining about it on Twitter?<p>I&#x27;m not saying that I&#x27;m not one of those people too - I&#x27;m just saying we need to start thinking about action and not identification.<p>I&#x27;m hoping that&#x27;s the next article Bruce writes.

Wow, I didn&#x27;t realize that the lavabit guy had been threatened with prosecution for opting out of continuing his business. That makes me incredibly angry. The sheer audacity of it is baffling.

The idea of a National Security Letter, a device which strips the recipient of several basic human rights, is so blatantly unconstitutional that it should have never been allowed to exist at all, let alone persist as long as it has. It&#x27;s a device straight out of the Cold War east bloc.

Several months ago that tone would have sounded conspiracy crazed nutty. But post-Snowden and given that it&#x27;s schneier, it&#x27;s sad to realize we&#x27;ve come to realize how bad the situation is. I&#x27;m still inclined to not change any actions on my part because I&#x27;m not worried about being under surveillance. I&#x27;m neither interesting, nor engaged in anything interesting. However, I would like it if the spying were reduced to remove the bulk tapping of the internet.

It&#x27;s too bad the NSA didn&#x27;t want to spy on Google Reader...

&quot;That was before the Patriot Act and National Security Letters. Now, presumably, Nacchio would just comply. Protection rackets are easier when you have the law backing you up.&quot;<p>Reminds me of this old chestnut:<p>Q: Why does the government prosecute the Mafia?<p>A: They don&#x27;t want any competition.

I still cannot see any solution, other than total loss of privacy for all. If the NSA records were made publically accessible, then its a new Nash Equilibrium, but one where no-one has power by dint of secrecy.<p>But other than that, regulation? Even if it worked in the US would the Chinese or Russians agree?<p>I think perhaps its all or nothing.

&gt; To be fair, we don&#x27;t know if the government can actually convict someone of closing a business.<p>The Thirteenth Amendment makes it pretty clear you can&#x27;t force a person to work, unless they&#x27;ve been convicted of a crime. There may be an argument that he violated the NSL, but that&#x27;s not the same thing.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...</a>

You read where companies cannot divulge that fact that they have received a NSL? What if they all started reporting that they did NOT receive a NSL? Then when the reporting stopped, you could draw your own conclusions. Wouldn&#x27;t work for large companies that might get them frequently, but would be an option for the smaller ones like Lavabit.

I think everyone is missing the most important point, the one that history teaches. The enormous power surveillance brings (not the least being the fact that a little &quot;creative editing&quot;, ala the Nazis, will allow &lt;anyone&gt; to become both interesting and guilty of &lt;something&gt;). With that much power, even if &lt;bad stuff&gt; is not happening now, it will happen sooner or later; and then it will be too late!

I agree that it&#x27;s ultimately a policy issue that needs to be mended by congress, what I disagree with is the needless &quot;dig&quot; at companies that store and analyze large amounts of data, as if that somehow is invalid conduct. The problem is the government demanding access to that data, not that the data is there in the first place.