Lavabit's owner threatened with arrest for shutting down rather than spying on customers

[ljm2002]

36. Do you really think that pursuing Edward Snowden...

...is enough to justify the government overreach in this case?

Snowden's messages, like all messages on Lavabit, would have been encrypted and neither the government nor Lavabit would have the key. Therefore any messages the government might have obtained would be useless. Even if the NSA can decrypt using brute force, it would take awhile.

I think, as others have opined, that what the government wanted Lavabit to do was to monitor their users' keystrokes in order to obtain their passwords and/or key phrases. If that is what they wanted, then it makes perfect sense that he had to shut down the service immediately without notifying users. And it is not surprising the government would be furious with him for doing so, so it's not surprising they now want to arrest him.

Of course we don't know for sure what the government asked him to do, because he cannot speak about it to anyone. Parts of it, he cannot even discuss with his own lawyer.

But I guess you're okay with that.

Got any maps for us today?