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You state a natural consequence of information theory. The original poster states that "non-NSL warrants conform to the Constitutional protections and will continue to be served and fulfilled." Both these statements are true.

But does that mean that because you can compromise a system then the government is allowed to force you to compromise your systems to utterly betray the purposes for which they are designed and then lie about it?




This is vague and I apologize... but it has to be that way... for now.

I couldn't compromise the system... but as it turns out the feds have a few secret capabilities the public doesn't about... they still need certain things in order to break the security though and that's what I'm fighting. Both for the ability to tell people what those secret methods are and the right to not be forced into helping the feds compromise my system/service...


It is not about what the government is allowed to do, it is about what is technically possible. If eavesdropping is technically possible, it is bound to happen, and constitutional protections will not be much help. The NSA revelations should tell you as much: the constitution is only tangentially relevant to the day-to-day decisions at the NSA about who to spy on or how to conduct surveillance.

The reality is that laws can change, and that when we create systems that are technically easy to abuse, there will be people who push for the law to change so that the system is legally easy to abuse. The police are always look for more power, and if you have something like Lavabit, the police will want to have on-demand access to it -- and they will want to reduce the barriers to getting a warrant, or even remove the requirement to get a warrant in the first place (like, say, if the emails are older than 180 days). By having a back door inherent in its design, and by positioning itself as the gatekeeper for that backdoor, Lavabit invites abuse and its users were lucky that the founder is a man of principles.




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