He hasn't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court order. This case has much higher profile than the CEO who got in trouble a while ago. Lots of international newspapers have written stories about Lavabit after the shutdown.
I think if Levison was arreted, it would be a turning point in the political implications of this case. From the slow response, it seems like the authorities are worried about doing this. And rightfully so.
He hasn't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court order.
I have to suspect that's because he was willing to shut down his company and make a big stink. It he hadn't done that, I think it would have been much easier for the feds to arrest some random guy in a Dallas apartment, suggesting that he's a nefarious hacker in league with Snowden and possibly other nefarious people. With 10k users, I'm sure they could find something to say that there were, say, "suspected drug dealers" using the service.
It was very smart of him to get out front of the story. Now if the Feds go after him, he's the businessman taking a principled stand.
Once he's shut down the business, the ability of the judge to gain compliance by imprisoning him has been sharply narrowed. That is the point of many contempt proceedings.
> It was very smart of him to get out front of the story. Now if the Feds go after him, he's the businessman taking a principled stand.
This has been my argument with Snowden, too. It's damning that people have to raise a huge fuss in the media by deep-sixing themselves before the government gets to spin their story in order to not get railroaded.
> I have to suspect that's because he was willing to shut down his company and make a big stink
Why so many are stuck on the fact he "shut down the company" and did a good dead. I been downvoted about this before and its fine, I just didnt get my answer.
The Feds did not ask him to shut down; it wasnt Government mission. Their mission was to get access to Lavabit data. Said that, regardless if he shut down or not, Government will or already did get full access to Lavabit data. Its even worse that they shut down; if they were online you could go and clean up your mailbox (not necessarily from anything illegal, but for example your own naked pictures you sent to your wife). But since they are offline, nothing can be done. Government won.
Shutting down the company alerted users to possible surveillance. Government wanted to snoop in secret. Now their secret is out, and they may or may not get to snoop on their target(s) via other channels. Levison loses the proceeds of his business, but he has behaved ethically by discontinuing his service since he can no longer deliver what was promised. Levison took the closest thing he could get to a win.
Levison gets extra karma because he put everyone's interests ahead of his own short-term financial interests. By shutting his business in the manner that he did, he has poisoned the well for gov't snooping at other similar services. If he is lucky, he may suffer little or no further gov't retribution.
Lavabit claims they encrypted email on receipt and only decrypted when you logged in and gave them a password they could unlock the encryption key with. If the feds required lavabit to retain the clear text copies of received mail longer than they did for AV/Spam filtering, shutting down the service solves this. Similarly, it prevents anyone from getting the decrypted copies when someone accesses the server.
On the other hand, if Lavabit merely got a warrant of Edward Snowden's email, shutting down the service and claiming they can't talk about it is just a publicity stunt since secret or not, it's pretty clear the government has a legally valid reason for that warrant.
This is completely obvious to anyone who is making an effort at observing what's going on right now. The big problem is that is isn't obvious to a casual observer.
From my perspective, as a foreigner, the US Government is currently doing a ridiculous chicken dance to avoid overt similarities to any famous totalitarian government. But at the same time, it seems very obvious that it is systematically sidestepping many principles of democracy and the rule of law. You won't be able to say something like "The US Government agencies are acting like the Stasi" and have all your facts intact. But there are plenty of dodgy things happening that would fit smoothly into the policy of many previous totalitarian governments.
I think that pointing out all these small details in a credible fashion is one of the necessary actions to get more popular support against these policies. Things aren't looking very good.
It's not just the secret laws that are like that. I think it's an exaggeration to say that most people commit "three felonies a day", but someone running any sort of business or organization probably does something that could be interpreted as breaking some federal law or other regularly. Or the feds can just question someone until they contradict themselves on something, then bust them for lying to a federal official.
The middle-class public generally isn't against arrest and/or execution by the government for secret crimes. What they are against is the arrest of people that they relate to, and who share their values. The only principled stands that they can understand are standing for children, animals, personal possessions, and customer service.
IMO, by doing all of these interviews where all he can be specific about is that he has had to close down his modestly successful independent business in order to protect his customers, he's made himself pretty safe. That is, until some child-porn ring bust gets press released as using lavabit as a crucial means of communication.
While I hope no harm comes to Levison, part of me wishes the gov't would charge him. I'd like to think they couldn't find a jury that would convict him, and I wouldn't be surprised if it incited a large public reaction. So I bet they don't charge him; since Levison has made it obvious that he won't be bullied.
I think if Levison was arreted, it would be a turning point in the political implications of this case. From the slow response, it seems like the authorities are worried about doing this. And rightfully so.