More Snowden fallout, more government madness

This morning I read about the Lavabit company shutting down. This company, owned by Ladar Levisonis, is reported to have hosted encrypted email conversations, used by Edward Snowden while he was in Hong Kong. If you read the owner’s statement below, it implies that he was served with a NSA letter and the “Justice” Department refuses to allow him to discuss what they want. Obviously they want everything. The chances are, that his encrypted email system did not let him see the traffic but he was just the conduit that the email traffic flowed through.

Our government is using its standard tactic of forcing its target to hire legal representation, or else. It’s a punitive technique to destroy citizens, with or without a trial. If Mr. Levisonis rolls over, his legal fees will be large. If he doesn’t, they’ll be larger. In either instance, he will be destroyed by our government. Squashed like a bug.

I know how to fix this government bullying problem if elected. Do you recall the Pledge of Allegiance – “…with liberty and justice for all.” I think that our government doesn’t know what it means, at all.

I do.

Based on our government behavior, I think that very senior government officials must think that its a jingle, and otherwise meaningless.

I don’t.

If Mr. Levisonis doesn’t lay-down and go belly-up comply, our government may arrest him for conspiracy and dozens of other charges, and try him in Virginia. Why Virginia? He’ll almost certainly be found guilty. Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC is where many government employees and contractors live. They won’t bite the hand that feeds them.

As a thirty-five year veteran of the IT business, working with VDI and Big Data (the computer technology used by the NSA), I really doubt that the Lavabit founder can provide any useful information to the government, other than possibly who wrote to Snowden and vice versa.

It’s likely that any logs were automatically destroyed, and the NSA has this information addressee information anyway. How? Remember the illegal NSA domestic PRISM program. Even TOR has been compromised. So why are they doing it? They are sending a message, a very strong message. Another email service, Silent Circle, has announced that it’s shutting down before being served, as it fears our government!

As an individual (using personal funds), not campaign related, I have donated money to Lavabit’s defense. I urge you to do the same, here. There may come a day that “Change you can believe in” will mean a knock on your door. A knock that you won’t want. Your neighbors will shrug, as our government is keeping us “safe” and they suspected you of something anyway.

What has happened to my America? We are being ring-fenced, very slowly. By the time the majority realize it, it will be too late. We must stop this madness.

Editor’s note: October 14, 2013

The New Yorker magazine published an article detailing exactly what happened to Lavabit. The FBI wanted to get Lavabit’s private SSL key so they could monitor, not just suspected criminals, but all users of his system. When he failed to comply, the court penalized him $1,000 day, that was increased to $5,000 a day. It’s a sad story of how our own government is blackmailing the IT (and other) businesses.

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