Snowden Finally Identified As Target of Investigation That Ended Lavabit (washingtontimes.com) 77
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Times: Three years after a government investigation forced the shuttering of Lavabit, a Texas-based email provider, its CEO revealed Friday that an account belonging to Edward Snowden spurred the probe that put his company out of business. "Ladar Levison shut down his encrypted webmail service in August 2013 amid an FBI investigation focused on one of his company's nearly half-a-million customers," reports The Washington Times. "A gag-order that has just recently been vacated in federal has legally prevented him up until now from confirming the account in question was registered to none other than the NSA contractor attributed with one of the largest intelligence leaks in U.S. history. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton nullified the mandatory non-disclosure orders in a June 13 court filing that went unnoticed until Lavabit released a statement Friday. Officially, the consent order approved by Judge Hilton in the Eastern District of Virginia earlier this month removes all gag-orders concerning Lavabit and Mr. Levison with regards to a grand jury investigation that led the FBI to Mr. Snowdenâ(TM)s email account. 'While Iâ(TM)m pleased that I can finally speak freely about the target of the investigation, I also know the fight to protect our collective freedom is far from over,' Mr. Levison said in a statement. He said he plans to discuss the case further during the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas this summer."
I'm confused (Score:1, Interesting)
Is this summary mentioning Mr. Snowden's e-mail account, or that of Mr. Snowdenâ(TM)? Apostrophes aren't all that difficult, are they?
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I think there are two kinds of apostrophes, one that's at an angle and looks nice and the plain old upright one. When someone pastes the former from another site into slashcode it screws it up rather than simply substituting the latter.
Of course the editors could replace them manually, but to do that they'd have to notice, which means they'd have to use the preview.
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' and `?
The latter is the backtick, or grave accent. Below the escape key, usually. It's not intended to be an apostrophe. Don't use it as such.
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You hit the nail on the head. That link provides a nice little test suite.
âGood morning, Dave,â said HAL.
â(TM)Good morning, Dave,â(TM) said HAL.
ââGood morning, Dave,â(TM)â(TM) said HAL.
âGood morning, Dave,â(TM) said HAL.
``Good morning, Dave,'' said HAL.
`Good morning, Dave,' said HAL.
âoeGood morning, Dave,â said HAL.
âGood morning, Dave,â(TM) said HAL.
No surprise that slashdot fails more than half of them.
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Not the backtick. Unicode character U+02BC (MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE).
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There are at least three : the ASCII one which fulfils the logical job of an indicator of possession (which Slashdot can handle), the single quote mark (as a pair of delimiters for indirectly quoted speech, opening and closing versions). Depending on how one's keyboard mapping is set up, the keyboard characters may use one of the three, or application-level software may see an ASCII apostrophe, and deduce from context that the opening or losing single-quote mark is
Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Insightful)
it happens due to a copy and paste (from m$ word?) from somewhere and page encoding here.
submitter probably don't see it.
editors should check for that before moving the submission to main. that is what editors are for. they could automate the checks if they are lazy or forget.
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Suggestion: Make "Preview" mandatory for submissions.
(And, dogdangit, implement unicode. In perl, it is not too hard to filter out unicode control characters, which was the reason for backing out of it a decade ago. It's a one-liner. Fix it. Or ask for help from the community.)
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It already is.
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These characters look perfectly OK on preview (that’s the fun part).
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It's not the only one, though I agree that it's rare. It's probably because when slashcode was first written unicode was uncommon.
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Or, we colud just use our fukicng bnrais and stop setiwang the slaml shit.
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I'm an pants-peeing idiot and I diddle kittens. -- CaptainDork
I quite agree. There's little need for copy/pasting. We can for example, capture perfectly the sentiments of another writer by paraphrasing what they said.
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And we could perfectly fake quoting, but we'd have to remember that the tags don't pick up the member name.
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I like to squat on the ground naked and pretend the Earth is my mighty steed. -- CaptainDork
I'm glad we agree.
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I question that unicode is a security risk. In fact I deny it. You do need to take a few precautions, but not many, it's simple. The major problem AFAIKT is that it can be used to generate links that don't go where you think they do, and that can easily be guarded against in multiple different ways...and is uncommon anyway. Besides, since TinyURL has so many fans there are lots of ways to do *that*.
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I followed your link, and it seems to only apply to unicode characters in links. There's NO reason that this should affect the display of text. About as I thought.
If you want to argue that only ASCII chars should be allowed in links, I'd have no problems with that. Since most users of this site use predominately English, and most valid web sites have ASCII urls, that should rarely cause a problem. But text is a different matter, and unicode text should be displayed as given. If you want to be especiall
i won't believe in our justice system (Score:5, Insightful)
i won't believe our justice system holds any actual justice until these individuals are arrested and taken to court for wilful violation of their oaths of office and for violating the 4th amendment rights of 300 million US citizens (and the civil rights of innocent people all around the world):
James Clapper
Dianne Feinstein
Keith Alexander
Mike Rogers
George W Bush
Barack Obama
There are probably others too, but at least those people. It shouldn't be a witch-hunt. They deserve the presumption of innocence, due process, and to be tried by a jury of their peers the same as anyone does. Still, there is plenty of reasonable cause for them to stand trial.
If we are not willing to do this, then our society has devolved into "laws for thee but not for me". If that's what we want, then fine, but let's make it official, and write it into our legal system that high ranking party officials are considered to be above the law. Let's pass a new constitutional amendment to that effect: we no longer want government officials to be subject to the law. And let's repeal the 4th, which we can do with a 2/3 majority of states voting for that. It would at least be honest.
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i won't believe our justice system holds any actual justice until these individuals are arrested and taken to court for wilful violation of their oaths of office and for violating the 4th amendment rights of 300 million US citizens (and the civil rights of innocent people all around the world):
James Clapper
Dianne Feinstein
Keith Alexander
Mike Rogers
George W Bush
Barack Obama
You conveniently forgot two large offenders.
Hillary Clinton.
Bill Clinton.
+1 for calling out Diane Feinstien. She is a disgusting traitor and fraud who has been selling out the US to foreign powers for decades. Somehow she's gotten away with it. Her "time" needs to come.
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i won't believe our justice system holds any actual justice until these individuals are arrested and taken to court for wilful violation of their oaths of office and for violating the 4th amendment rights of 300 million US citizens (and the civil rights of innocent people all around the world):
James Clapper
Dianne Feinstein
Keith Alexander
Mike Rogers
George W Bush
Barack Obama
There are probably others too, but at least those people. It shouldn't be a witch-hunt. They deserve the presumption of innocence, due process, and to be tried by a jury of their peers the same as anyone does. Still, there is plenty of reasonable cause for them to stand trial.
If we are not willing to do this, then our society has devolved into "laws for thee but not for me". If that's what we want, then fine, but let's make it official, and write it into our legal system that high ranking party officials are considered to be above the law. Let's pass a new constitutional amendment to that effect: we no longer want government officials to be subject to the law. And let's repeal the 4th, which we can do with a 2/3 majority of states voting for that. It would at least be honest.
I sympathize, but I think it's a terrible idea.
Western Democracy has a norm that politicians carrying out their duties are restrained by the courts and judged by the ballot box, with the exception of things like corruption they don't go to prison for carrying out their jobs, even if they did things that were illegal.
The idea of accountability though criminal law sounds nice, but then Democrats think Cheney should be in jail for ordering torture, Republicans think Obama should be in jail for executive orders
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It's not just nice, it's been a major part of law in English speaking countries since King John.
"No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it." - Theodore Roosevelt
If you want a despotic King or a Tsar then just be honest about it instead of going on about "You live in a Democracy. If you think a politician has something wrong then it's the responsibility of you and your fellow voters
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It's not just nice, it's been a major part of law in English speaking countries since King John.
"No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it." - Theodore Roosevelt
I don't put them above the law, I just use different enforcement mechanisms. When it comes to policy the law is vague enough that it's basically just a framework for people to negotiate boundaries.
If the court tells the President they don't have the authority to do X then the President stops. The fact the President didn't go to jail doesn't mean they disobey the law.
And just who is it to say a politician has broken the law? I think "In God We Trust" on the money is obviously unconstitutional but the SCOTUS
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Such as the USA and every other democracy?
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Such as the USA and every other democracy?
Such as the USA and every other democracy?
Well no, the US does not jail politicians, not for carrying out their duties in a way that violates the law.
It does jail them for corruption because that's not a political crime, that's them using their position for personal benefit. But you don't go to jail because your idea of what your job entailed was judged illegal.
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Many have. Many have argued that their corrupt activities were for the greater good instead of their own pocket. Courts either found otherwise or more often that it didn't matter why they were breaking the law that it was their illegal actions that mattered.
I get that a lot of people here are very naive about politics but I cannot work out if you are exceptionally so or just pretending to be to wind me up.
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The way I see it, Mike Rogers and Dianne Feinstein don't belong on that list.
They hold and promote anti-American values, but the problem is the idiots who elected them. We the people are the main enemy, and those pieces of shit are merely the symptom. There's nothing illegal about Congress enacting bad legislation, and they aren't really expected to uphold the constitution. They committed wrongness, but no crime.
The executive branch people are the ones who probably broke the law, and should therefore be
Let's not forget (Score:2, Informative)
About this bit which came out in March 2016
https://www.wired.com/2016/03/government-error-just-revealed-snowden-target-lavabit-case/
I did a quick Google search but didn't come across the same Slashdot link and I'm too lazy to spend more than 2 seconds looking, sorry.
Fight (Score:1)
>" the fight to protect our collective freedom is far from over"
Oh i'd say it IS over. Samaritan and his goons have won...
This is the issue. Why was the gag order necessary (Score:2)
How would knowing about he order have affected anything?
Exactly, (Score:5, Insightful)
How would knowing about he order have affected anything?
What possible purpose could that gag order have served? It's not like Snowden or the rest of the world didn't know to stop trusting Lavabit.
The only motivation I can see is an attempt to avoid public outcry that is a gross abuse of power. The like of which is only seen in dictatorships under the heading of "political stability".
I guess we all knew the US had serious corruption issues, now the question is if anyone will be held accountable for this.
(I'm kidding of course: nobody will be held accountable, this is was free speech being suppressed not availability of fire arms)
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It's probably standard procedure for classified investigations. All orders are gagged unless someone of high enough rank specifically orders otherwise.
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Yes I do know that Orwell deliberately based it on Stalin's Soviet Union and made no secret of it, but the message was that such things can happen where you live if things get bad enough.
Oh good. (Score:5, Informative)
And here I thought they revealed it was snowden back in march.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Well unless there happened to be another unrelated Ed_snowden@lavabit.com
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accidental release vs official release?
Groklaw collateral damage (Score:5, Informative)
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And yet...
How certain are you *which* is the lesser evil?
When both are such liars, certainty seems unwarranted.
Subjugation of laws (Score:3, Interesting)
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It's worth noting that the government denies that the Declaration of Independence has any legal status.
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Hmm, I thought you truncated that text until I checked. I thought it read "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people or by the states.", and now I can't find why I thought so. But perhaps it should have read that way, so the states would have more vigorously contested the expansion of federal power.
I do agree that the current "official interpretation" of the meaning of the ninth amendment is a blatant power grab of the
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Lavabit was a horrible idea anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a case where evil had a good side-effect: people aren't using lavabit anymore. That's good news for all privacy/security advocates.
The whole reason lavabit was attacked by the government, is that the government's attack would have worked. It is totally absurd for people to be downloading their email client plus pgp implementation from the server every time they want to read their email. The government wanted to compromise the client to have it log Snowden's key, and they decided the best tactic was to stick a gun in the lavabit guy's face.
Lavabit's users (including Snowden) are lucky that the government resorted to such thuggery, since you can't intimidate someone without their knowledge. So lavabit knew about the attack and since the Levison is a good guy, he shut it down. But the attackers' goal might also have been compromised by stealthy tactics instead (either by penetrating the servers, or MitM). Had that happened, lavabit wouldn't have shut down; instead, the client would have been compromised without anyone knowing.
The tech was awful, and predictable awful. Nobody should have been using lavabit, precisely because it implemented pgp as a downloaded program in the browser. Let's hope lavabit's death is the end of this kind of nonsense.
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No, the big problem with Lavabit is what shut it down - when Lavabit refused to give up the account, the government went after the key, and the problem with that is there was only one. So by going after the key, not only was one account compromised, but all of them.
That was the problem. That's why it was shut down - the whole site was protected by a single key and with that, everyone was compromised.
It was why Lavabit couldn't give up the account to begin with - because they wouldn't have access to one acco
Next, Truecrypt (Score:2)