Inside the Decision To Shut Down Silent Mail 182
Trailrunner7 writes with this snippet from ThreatPost:: "Silent Circle's decision to shut down its Silent Mail email service may have come quickly yesterday, and the timing of the announcement admittedly was prompted by Lavabit's decision to suspend operations hours before. But the seeds for this decision may have been sown long before Edward Snowden, who reportedly used Lavabit as a secure email provider, was a household name and NSA warrants for customer data were known costs of doing business. ... 'When we saw the Lavabit announcement, the thing we were worrying about had happened, and it had happened to somebody else. It was very difficult to not think I'm next,' Callas said. 'I had been discussing with Phil [founder and PGP developer Phil Zimmerman] over dinner the night before, should we be doing this and what the timing should be. I was looking at it from point that I want to be a responsible service provider and not leave users in a lurch. [The Lavabit announcement] told me I have to start moving on it now.'"
American hi-tech has a significant ethics problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:American hi-tech has a significant ethics probl (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think there is any money directly attached. It's more of a threatened 'if you don't comply we throw you and your employees in jail' thing. Not sure how that would work out in a real world courtroom (I'd like to assume it would make it to court including a jury), but the companies likely don't want to chance it. Can't say I blame them in this case- it's looking like McCarthyism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mcarthyism) all over again. Sorry for the rusty geek skills.
Re:American hi-tech has a significant ethics probl (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think there is any money directly attached. It's more of a threatened 'if you don't comply we throw you and your employees in jail' thing. Not sure how that would work out in a real world courtroom (I'd like to assume it would make it to court including a jury), but the companies likely don't want to chance it. Can't say I blame them in this case- it's looking like McCarthyism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mcarthyism) all over again. Sorry for the rusty geek skills.
sure there is money involved for the taps. it's not an extra tax. of course this applies only to the ~5 biggest service providers of nsa. and it's not a secret that telephone providers are not the one's footing the bill for phone taps.
plus, what good is a jury consisting of people chosen by the court in secret who can only give a verdict that's secret and can't speak of it to anyone....
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plus, what good is a jury consisting of people chosen by the court in secret who can only give a verdict that's secret and can't speak of it to anyone....
And, if what's happened to the "Osama" Seal Team 6 and various other people who might be privy to high-profile operational information is any indication, they'd probably be Disappeared anyway, regardless of their alliances. Things are getting bad.
Re:American hi-tech has a significant ethics probl (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the threat of jail, but the threat that things can start going wrong for any provider that does not play ball with the NSA.
It's like the mafia thugs that come into the restaurant and sell the owner "insurance" because "a lot of bad things can happen, you know?"
There is a very short window of opportunity to stop the Panopticon now. Unfortunately, the people in power have made it clear that nothing in the political process is going to stop them. The solutions, if they come, will be outside of the political process. They made it that way, so people who resist ubiquitous surveillance and surrender of privacy can be seen as "radicals" and "terrorists" and worse.
There are some bad times coming, I fear.
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Don't Bogart that joint, my friend. You've had enough already.
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But if the legislators are willing (and they seem to be warming up to change), all this spying, secret laws, and secret courts can be made very explicitly illegal.
What good does it do to pass legislation against these laws when the CIA and NSA can just ignore them? They've already been ignoring laws and lying to Congress for years, what makes you think some new laws are going to stop them?
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I am cautiously optimistic. They must have found (or created) a loophole in the law, so the chances of prosecuting anyone may be small. But if the legislators are willing (and they seem to be warming up to change), all this spying, secret laws, and secret courts can be made very explicitly illegal.
Yes....
Note that a number of network news folk were ignoring some of the TLA constitutional issues up to the point that it was obvious that they were targeted.
The hacking of FOX computers when FOX was a historic defender of some of this nonsense put the writing on the wall for all the networks that could read and were interested in reporting news.
The courts, congress, executive branch may be silent because of thick folders of transgressions that Hover would have coveted in his day.
We have seen worth
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If you want the best opportunity to be a millionaire, India and China are probably the top two. You are more likely to rise from poverty to riches there than in the US. There are lots
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This is far worse than the Panopticon. In the Panopticon you might be being watching at any time. In the UK/US are are being watched all the time, and being recorded all the time so that the authorities can go back and watch you in the past for at least two years.
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There's already off-line surveillance. The United States mail is being tracked by the NSA and the DEA.
By the way, in the past week it's come out that the DEA is doing the same tracking of phone calls and email as the NSA. To make it worse, they're instructing agents to "recreate" the investigation records to hide that tracking. So now we've got the US government with TWO databases of phone calls and emails of all US citizens.
Re:American hi-tech has a significant ethics probl (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think there is any money directly attached.
Qwest said no, and lost all their government contracts, followed by the CEO being arrested for having used said government contracts' value in financial reports.
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Defy the govt and get burned. Not so easy. (Score:5, Interesting)
These service providers should be replying to the Government with "Hello no, bitches. Read the damn Constitution of the United States of America."
Your sentiment is admirable, but lets not be naive. Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio fought back against the government, just as you said. He is now jailed for six years [businessinsider.com].
Before someone makes the asinine argument that he was convicted of "insider trading", take note that he would be in the clear today if he had played ball, and the government awarded Qwest the contracts.
My point is, resistance has a heavy price. I don't think we should be so eager to demand that others become martyrs when it is clear we are willing to do so little to protect them. As evidence, I point to how little is being done for Snowden today.
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In this scenario, it's only insider trading if he knew the stock would go down, not expect them to go, up after he sold.
If you already know that you've told the NSA to take a hike - and you know (or have a good idea) that this will have implications for the government projects you're bidding for - projects that might be the only thing keeping you afloat - it's not exactly rocket surgery to predict what will happen to the share price.
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In this scenario, it's only insider trading if he knew the stock would go down, not expect them to go, up after he sold.
If you already know that you've told the NSA to take a hike - and you know (or have a good idea) that this will have implications for the government projects you're bidding for ...
Why would he know those signed contracts were dependent upon them selling out their customers, contrary to the wording of the Constitution? Oh yeah, because the Constitution ought to be considered as worthless as toilet paper in this day and age, silly. What rock have you been hiding under?!?
Ah, good to know, my bad.
Re: American hi-tech has a significant ethics prob (Score:1)
I'd be cool with mass surveillance if
1) a million people didn't have access
2) individual reasonable suspiction was required to use it and
3) it was only for for terrorism cases
And no bullsh*t interpretations of the above rules.
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I'd be cool with mass surveillance if
Why would you ever be "cool" with mass surveillance?
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Why would you ever be "cool" with mass surveillance?
Fear. At least Francis Scott Key's contemporaries knew that you can't have a free nation of cowards. That's a boolean AND, not an OR.
Re: American hi-tech has a significant ethics prob (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Actually the number of people who have access to it is over a million, so this requirement is satisfied.
2) EVERYBODY is a reasonable suspect, so this requirement is satisfied.
3) Terrorism is defined by the law in such a way that hiding what you are doing is plausible grounds for suspicion of terrorism, so this requirement is satisfied.
Aren't you glad you're cool with mass survielance.
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Re: American hi-tech has a significant ethics prob (Score:4, Insightful)
And no bullsh*t interpretations of the above rules.
You mean like
drugs==terrorism
child sex abuse==terrorism
child=<17 years old
Re: American hi-tech has a significant ethics prob (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you think tons of drugs from Mexico and Colombia get into the US every day?
The Overlords want you to think that it is all due to corrupt policemen and politicians south of the border, but how does it get in and then gets distributed?
Same answer, corrupt policemen and politicians. But they want the market for themselves, so yes, you try to do it on your own, you're a terrorist!
Re: American hi-tech has a significant ethics prob (Score:5, Funny)
But spying on facebook chats will solve this!
John Doe has invited you to Drug pickup September the 2nd 22:00
John Doe 11:00 ... Please share and invite all your friends who may want to participate in the bidding process! Peace!
Yo man! Those cocaine subs will arrive at (time & location)
Can't decide whatever to post as AC or aliquis. Score mod points and karma or forever be seen as a drug lord by the NSA.
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Can't decide whatever to post as AC or aliquis. Score mod points and karma or forever be seen as a drug lord by the NSA.
The things you do for karma.
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They can see the message going from your pc to Slashdot. They'll know about your hypothetical drug-smuggling plans anyway. Isn't that lovely?
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Re: American hi-tech has a significant ethics prob (Score:4, Insightful)
Kiddie with a (semi)nude picture of itself on their own phone => kiddie-porn manufacturer
Kiddie having received an above picture of same-agged other kiddie => pedofile
A couple of kiddies having a relationship and the older one of them (even by couple of a months) becomes 18 => pedofile
As a male taking a leak in the bushes and someone sees you => pedofile
Drawing a nude kiddie on paper => kiddie-porn manufacturer
And those are just the ones that went to court.
Sorry, can't remember good generic examples about terrorism, save for that pretty much everything gets tagged with it
Robbing a bank ? Terrorism
Someone sees you when you show a gun to some friends ? Terrorism
Taking pictures of a public object ? Terrorism
Disagreeing with some "authority" which tries to tell you that that is illegal ? You're (must be) a terrorist.
On other words: don't hold your breath. The ones with the authority probably have to much fun with having manufactured yet another reason to harras the common citizens and the citizenry is too eazy to scare (one way or the other) into cooperation.
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His point was that around the world the age where someone becomes a legal adult varies significantly. The US's 18 rule is not universal. It's yet another example of the ignorance US citizens have (I am a US citizen) about the rest of the world.
On the other hand this guy might really be a pedophile and I just defended him. But given that this is slashdot, we should apply occam's razor.
Re: American hi-tech has a significant ethics prob (Score:5, Insightful)
2) If it's based on individual suspicion, it's not mass surveillance anymore. Or do you mean everything is recorded but only released if an individual case merits it? That is not unreasonable in principle, but there would have to be an ironclad mechanism for releasing these recordings in approved cases only.
3) Maybe you also want to include kiddie porn. And drug trafficking. And seeding sedition. And copyright violations. And if you don't want to include any of that, there are plenty of legislators and voters who do want this. See how that works?
I also think that there are cases where mass surveillance would be warranted. But in practice I think the downsides and dangers, not to mention any honest person's right to privacy, far outweigh the potential benefits. Even if those benefits include not having the occasional occupied building or train blow up. Freedom does come at a price
Re: American hi-tech has a significant ethics prob (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: American hi-tech has a significant ethics pro (Score:5, Insightful)
The Constitution is not a suicide pact. There are options between colonoscopy-level-surveillance and nuclear-price-of-feedom.
Re:American hi-tech has a significant ethics probl (Score:5, Insightful)
There's negligible money in complying with these (illegal) 'requests' fro data. Why spread FUD? If you want to do something about it, fix the damn US government. Personally,I'm still surprised a few of those companies haven't moved to Canada.
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Well that depends, right? It's reportedly $25 a request. Do you know how many requests they are making? That could add up to a lot of millions.
That really isn't where the profit is.
The profit is in not being blacklisted from government work, being harassed by the FTC, not having your car randomly crash into a tree and explode into flames, et cetera.
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Why spread FUD?
Is it FUD if it is "certain" and "beyond doubt" that private companies are taking money from government agencies to help them scoop up your private communications?
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You make it sound like they have a choice (other than leaving the country or shutting down).
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You make it sound like they have a choice (other than leaving the country or shutting down).
I don't know. I have a suspicion that some companies are quite happy to lend a helping hand to the surveillance dragnet. Certainly the Guardian articles pointed to at least one company that was apparently quite willing to cooperate. I'm sure there's either increased revenues or increased chance of securing large government contracts as an incentive for them to comply. Probably the opportunity for big contracts is the bigger piece of the pie.
Re:American hi-tech has a significant ethics probl (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't NSA money. Compared to the world's players, the NSA isn't that big. There are a lot of people who want that data too:
1: LEOs in the US. That NSA info gets forked over to Joe DA who is being forced by the private prisons to shove as many people in jail as possible (or be replaced by someone who can), the NSA stuff is a gold mine. Find people texting at a location after dark at a park? Criminal trespass charges. Kids texting out of school, curfew charges. People on parole seen on a camera by someone else, big cash as those arrestees go in for the long haul. With the fact that all but two states in the US are required by contract to maintain 90% bed occupancy, someone has to fill those beds. Don't forget all the marijuana charges and charges of conspiracy (two people talking about a grow room can felony charges.)
2: Insurance companies. Already, I have had to go through a physical because someone snapped a photo of me in a humidor and posted it onto FB, and the insurance company questioned if I were a smoker or not, then demanded the physical and drug test. Picture the gold mine they have.
3: Other country's NSA-departments. Knowing who is a system admin at another country's sensitive /secret/top secret depot is very important, as that person can be given the $5 wrench treatment (or one of their family members) until they give up and do a Snowden. Think the US is good, China has far better technology, intel, and manpower at sigint.
4: Companies and governments. If an area is starting to have water issues, get the people moving in to raise prices on that sky high.
So, the NSA by itself isn't a threat. That data in other people's hands is. It would be nice if Google, Apple, etc. would not just keep passively handing items to advertisers, because they are on the verge of losing their entire subscriber (not customer) base to foreign services.
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Re:American hi-tech has a significant ethics probl (Score:5, Insightful)
The American public tweets their favorite sexual positions and post pics of themselves stoned on FB
Some people do that stuff. And some people run large corporations and associations that guard their data and communications quite closely. America is not a homogenous group of pot-heads and sex-crazed teenagers.
Some people are criminal defense attorneys and healthcare law attorneys and civil rights attorneys that are busy suing the government to defend the rights of citizens. You think they want their private emails reviewed by big brother?
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As always, consumers will vote with their wallets.
And, as always, they will vote for convenience, privacy, especially somebody else's, be damned...
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To the extent which they control the government, their privacy is well protected, mostly from us.
The Government Wins (Score:5, Insightful)
This is called "oppression," when you live in fear of being the "next" target of government "scrutiny."
Re:The Government Wins (Score:5, Interesting)
This is called "oppression," when you live in fear of being the "next" target of government "scrutiny."
And what is the name for all of the businesses who just merrily went along with government requests? Apparently all of the big companies fought very little (if at all)
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I wonder what you'd do if you were under the thumb of government pressure. It amazes me you people blame companies for government coercion. Maybe you should concentrate on the root of the problem first... or would you rather goose step for big brother by diverting attention to the 15th man on a 12 man team?
Re:The Government Wins (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the blame on companies is rooted in the idea that big business will spend insane amounts of effort on avoiding taxation, or lobbying to make legal conditions more favorable to them, but then appears to resist very little when government agencies attempt to intrude on their customers (or users') privacy.
Of course, it kinda makes sense. Whilst a government might be actively hostile towards its people, big business tends to view customers/consumers/users more like cattle - dispassionately and as disposable.
In that light, companies that do tend to try to fight for their users (eg, a certain micro-blogging company) seem even more virtuous by comparison.
Re:The Government Wins (Score:4, Insightful)
Quisling [wikipedia.org]
Re:The Government Wins (Score:5, Informative)
And what is the name for all of the businesses who just merrily went along with government requests?
Corporations. They make fascism [econlib.org] much easier to implement. An out of control judiciary provides the nudges necessary to force most businesses to adopt a corporate form.
Re:The Government Wins (Score:5, Insightful)
And what is the name for all of the businesses who just merrily went along with government requests?
Corporations. They make fascism [econlib.org] much easier to implement. An out of control judiciary provides the nudges necessary to force most businesses to adopt a corporate form.
They so often use wishy-washy tools to convict people it beggars belief. WTF is mail/wire fraud? WTF is obstruction of justice? The Book doesn't clearly tell. And if they find you talked to somebody about this then they'll slap conspiracy on top of it. The general strategy seems to be to slap charge upon charge upon charge onto those cases in the hope that something might stick. And this is usually when juries will pronounce somebody guilty of a couple of the dozens of charges and send somebody into the slammer for things that are hard to understand. It also doesn't help that judges tend to be former DAs. Or that DAs use plea bargains to bully somebody to bear witness against their main mark.
Also don't the Feds still pay corporate whistleblowers a percentage of the fines? A couple of years back I read of a guy who got 40 Megabucks for this.
As a private person I'd be much more afraid of the DOJ than some faceless corp.
Re:The Government Wins (Score:5, Insightful)
Protecting the privacy of citizens should include (or even start with) protecting that privacy from governmental prying eyes. If a company is not obliged by law to comply with a request for information, they should be forbidden, by law, to comply.
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And what is the name for all of the businesses who just merrily went along with government requests?
Campaign donors.
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And what is the name for all of the businesses who just merrily went along with government requests? Apparently all of the big companies fought very little (if at all)
By the time you get that far you're used to rolling over for government, because you've had to do it a lot. If you don't do what local government says, they will quickly drive you out of business through various types of selective enforcement. Welcome to our world of lawyers.
Why not move? (Score:1)
Instead of shutting these services down...why not move them outside of US control...you know...a different country.
I'm not buying the whole idea that this was done for the good of the users...this sounds more like co-ordinated effort to shut down secure communications with the assistance of the owners.
Because... (Score:5, Informative)
US businesses are run under US laws even if they are outside the US. This is related to that whole 'you can't bribery, even in countries where that's the norm' thing others have talked about in previous article's comments.
Basically in order to, as a US citizen, move your business abroad (without serious lobbying power) and forgoe the aforementioned issues, you're need to:
A. Reincorporate the business in a foreign nation.
B. Get your customer data transferred to the foreign nation without running afoul of US law.
C. Not have US citizens who are on the board/in key positions intimidated through legal or extralegal means to provide governmental access to the information.
Given that Zimmerman is one of the members of this particular company, and went through the predecessors to this with PGP, I'm pretty sure he's well aware of the legal ramifications both domestic and abroad at relocating his business.
Require cooperation across frontiers? (Score:2)
Re:Why not move? (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of shutting these services down...why not move them outside of US control...you know...a different country.
Name a country that won't turn over whatever information the U.S. government asks for and you'll most likely name a country where the government is worse than the U.S.
Re:Why not move? (Score:5, Informative)
Antigua
Nice climate, white sandy beaches, government not worried about telling the US where they can put their IP laws.
Re:Why not move? (Score:5, Interesting)
By your UID you should be old enough to remember Cayman Islands. Great place, white sandy beaches and a English-backed government.
When the US Government (thru the OECD) decided that the 400+ banks in Cayman were laundering money, the Cayman government caved in and signed a treaty to provide OECD member states with access to bank information.
Bear in mind, laundering money back then wasn't about financing terrorist organizations, it was about US citizens not paying taxes.
More recently, the Swiss turned over data on US citizens who have (had?) Swiss bank accounts.
Sorry, Antigua won't stand up to the US. No more than Cayman or the Swiss did.
And no, it will not take a aircraft carrier and its group off the coast. It will only take a call from some senior D.C. politicians before they cave in.
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Slysoft doesn't seem to be having any problems.
FATCA and US blackmail (Score:3)
FATCA (which applies to lots of countries, not only Switzerland) will, however, lead to giving customer data to the US.
It's basically blackmail by the US: Any bank that does not "voluntarily" release data on its US customers will be denied access to US dollar transactions in international banking. Since US dollars are rather important in international transactions, this is pretty much the death of any bank that does any sort of international business.
Swiss law prohibits turning over customer data to a forei
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Another possibility for the bank is to deny accounts to US citizens (and other persons who have to file taxes in the US). A bank that is a customer of mine does exactly that,
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Probably not worth answering an AC, but a couple of quick points:
- It is illegal to transfer data outside the country, but that doesn't stop it from happening. Consider the CDs of data purchased by the German government. The people who really deserve to be prosecuted are employees of the German government, who violated both Swiss and German law by purchasing stolen goods. Note that, they are not in jail.
- Essentially all of the large Swiss banks are affected. If they weren't, the government wouldn't have ra
$450 (Score:2)
Sure, it now costs $450. Consider: you will never need to file another American tax return (or pay for it to be done), nor will you ever again have to pay taxes to a country you neither live nor work in.
Anyway, what's your privacy worth? Would you like to share all of your financial data with unknown "third parties" and accept sole liability for whatever they do with it?
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Iceland [torrentfreak.com] is looking good...
Not only does their gov't respect the human right of privacy, the climate is ideal for major server farms.
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As the whole "tax evaders" situation described above proved, it caves in far too fast.
Add to that that they probably have no interest protecting a company that isn't even Swiss...
There's a reason why Snowden didn't fly to Zurich or Geneva from the beginning - he did his research (and from what he saw in 2007, apparently he didn't like the city anyway)
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Re:Why not move? (Score:5, Insightful)
To reliably do this, they must move themselves and have a self-hosted solution. If you host your data with anyone else you need to believe they value your data more than the money to be made from it or you are worth the head-ache of annoyingly trying to protect it from government agencies.
Over the last 10 years from time to time people within my company (which highly depends on privacy) have suggested hosting our servers/services with external hosting providers/cloud solutions. Every time I refuse. Their arguments are valid. It could be cheaper. It removes the hosting burden. These large providers are experts and could have better security. Even all of that being true the overriding truth as I see it is even though they may be better, cheaper, etc I can promise you we care about our data more than they will. FBI raids a data center for someone elses server and grabs our with it? Sorry, it was the FBIs fault! Any business reality makes handing over our data a legal requirement or just more convenient legally? Sorry we had to!
The last few months revelations just confirm what I've always known. If security and privacy are your business and you take it seriously, you had better be hosting it yourself. Google may have better technical experts than you, but I promise the people who actually make decisions internally care more about your data and will fight for it more when you host internally.
Re:Why not move? (Score:4, Insightful)
With corporations, unless they are some group like the EFF and "profits be damned we'll fight for our customers rights" the various legal requests, etc. will make fighting it so expensive that they eventually comply...
Unfortunately, when it comes down to the individual, things happen.
"Anonymous drug tip" results in a SWAT raid at 3am where you are shot. Or your family is shot. Same with "anonymous terrorist tip". Or "opps wrong address".
Ok, I'll turn down the paranoia...
"Sir, we'd really like to check things out but don't have time to get a Warrant. Do you have something to hide?"
or
"Well we know we can't legally get a warrant, but we can harass him with various criminal charges until his lawyer fees bankrupt him or until he complies".
Or I'll turn the geek paranoia back up
Slowly but surely over a number of years a back door has made it into GCC and other critial parts of the compiling tool chain that those "terrorists and criminals who use black terminals wtih white text instead of Windows Vista" use... and between access at your ISPs end and exploits that are now present on your computer, via kernel or userland stuff, and they manufacture the evidence or just suck it all off your computer.
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Another thing we do as much as possible is use self-signed certs as much as possible (obviously not always possible with client facing communications). Even I thought that was paranoid until recently, but if you think about it all the NSA has to do is intercept communication to/from CAs and brute force or have some back-door into that. Brute forcing just that small subset of internet communication can give you the certs to freely read the rest of the 99.9999% of SSL/TLS communication over the web.
Political, not technical solution required (Score:2)
Sure, self-hosting may work for now, until the government ups the ante by coming up with a new technical means of attack. At best, this will result in a technological arms race much like the one between malware makers and antivir companies. New exploits are being discovered and (ab)used as we speak.
The only real solution is a political one. The root of the problem is that the current government, in fact all three branches of the executive, legislature and judiciary seem to be of the opinion that their flagr
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Most people are not prepared to give up their home country so easily. And that would be what you would have to do. Not simply move the server - also move yourself, all business offices, property, etc. And make sure you do not cross the border (even into allied states in all likelihood) until this is a free country again. Are you ready to do that, to keep your secure email service open?
PGP does not run on mobile devices (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PGP does not run on mobile devices (Score:5, Insightful)
Secure email on mobile phones is not going to happen. The host is compromised.
Re:PGP does not run on mobile devices (Score:5, Insightful)
The host is compromised.
This is a good point. Dare I enter my GPG passphrase on a Droid, when Motorola is uploading some fraction of what I do to its servers in the background?
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Secure email on mobile phones is not going to happen. The host is compromised.
Why is this not modded higher? The house of cards is about to fall, or may have already fallen. We just need someone with conclusive proof of a Windows specific backdoor to compromise PGP or keylog us. There are so many tens of thousands of files and weekly updates that it's pretty intractable even for AV companies, should MS drop some polymorphic backdoor. I don't quite trust my brand new GPG setup under it. And honestly, why should we trust MS any more than our ISPs? we've known MS to be evil for eons, wh
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K9 mail + APG for PGP support? PGP *is* supported on mobile devices (Android at least, and I can't see reason for Apple to ban it). I think APG supports the Android GMail client as well.
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K9 mail only supports PGP/Inline, without the ability to even read PGP/MIME. PGP/Inline has been depreciated for nearly 20 years. Nearly all PGP mail sent is PGP/MIME, so K9's incomplete support is not terribly useful. From the dev's comments, he has very little interest in ever supporting PGP/MIME.
Also, with Google having root access to your Android phone and the ability to install/remove programs and modify your filesystem at will, do you really trust that your secret key is secure on their phone? Their c
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They claim to implement OpenPGP.
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SO, how would you use this with Hotmail without giving them (ie. Microsoft) your private key? Assuming that they even support S/MIME?
Jason
Easy solution: move your mail server to Russia (Score:4, Funny)
If ever there was a bastion of freedom and personal privacy, it's Russia. As far as I know, they don't even have clandestine operations in the government. I heard it was abandoned when the USSR fell. You need look no further than the show of moral fortitude the Vladimir Putin made when offering Edward Snowden a year, knowing full well that the US government could invade at any moment under the slightest provocation. Freedom and Liberty are the founding cornerstones of not just Russian democracy, but the creed by which every Russian lives, from the top of the government and business all the way down to the lowliest citizen. Everyone there is given a fair shake and speaking your mind is rewarded with praise and admiration.
It's time we put our collective money where it is respected and get out of the US into a place that will let us live our lives the way we want. Out of oppression and government intimidation and into a land of openness, fairness, and true liberty: Russia.
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Of course in the good ol' US of A, you don't pay off, you just have to get cozy with Obama & The Gang, otherwise they sick the IRS, the FBI or the NSA on you.
Big difference!
Move in right direction (Score:3)
Considering that Russia has had authoritarian governments for 500 years, they're actually very doing very well, in relative terms, with freedom, privacy, democracy, etc.
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Right on bro!
Never ever search for Guantanamo, Extraordinary Rendition or any such terms! You might find the truth and truth is bad for you.
Yes, it is much better to stay informed, as you say, about the terrible, terrible crimes commited in Eurasia and Eastasia.
Long live Big Brother!
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...it begs the question; Is there any one country that reeally does uphold these principles? Anyone care to name somewhere?
We'd have to define the principles first, as the libertarian, true liberal, Democrat liberal, and conservative ideas of both conflict. The best we can do is to define it only in terms of how much attention the government pays to our communications & movements.
Also, while I'm nowhere near a grammar geek (I'm lucky if I'm correct by accident most of the time), I've seen enough point out: "begs the question" doesn't mean "demands an explanation" or similar, it means "gives a circular argument." For examp
Nowhere, and here's why (Score:3)
If course there is nowhere you can go. That's the ridiculousness of the situation.
Here's why: once you start making any major country (any country) start thinking you are out to attack it, you're not going to have any place to hide. We've never had this freedom in the US. Never. Anonymity and privacy today is just as alive as it was in the best of times. It's just not as anonymous nor as private as we think it was. I would argue that it's even better today than it has ever been due to the sheer number of pe
President McCain strikes again (Score:3)
They told me if I voted for John McCain that government abuse would become so common that it would eventually come to be seen as inevitable. And they were right! [pjmedia.com]
Leave US (Score:2)
You comply with the subpoena or go to jail... (Score:5, Interesting)
We were a small ISP, and we got subpoenas multiple times per month. You don't say no to a court order, unless you want to spend some time in court/jail explaining to the judge why you feel like you shouldn't have to comply. This is fine if you're a hippie, have tons of time and money, nothing to lose, and could care less about eventually having a criminal record.
Due to CALEA, we were required to buy equipment to fulfill "tapping" requests from law enforcement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act You can thank Clinton and Congress (1994) for that.
It was another cost of doing business if you wanted to be a service provider in the U.S. Don't like it? You do something else....and so I did.
WebCrypto API? (Score:2)
When the WebCrypto API will be incorporated into most browsers, wouldn't it be possible to develop a PGP version that runs completely in the browser? This way, it can run on mobile devices, and can be used with hosted webmail solutions.
Business opportunity? (Score:2)
Now that a void has opened in this market, I wonder what it would take to set up something very much like Lavabit had? Dunno exactly what they offered but from what I can read posthumously it was little more than a databsse-backed anonymous remailer. Anyone know the details?
Locate the servers in Iceland or similar but have the company be based elsewhere, just to make it extra hard to get international warrants and similar.
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BlackBerry colludes with foreign governments to provide their encryption scheme to those who wish to spy. Additionally, if you don't run your own BES server, all your account passwords on the BlackBerry are sent to their servers from which all subsequent connections are made (to support push).