FBI demanded #Lavabit give them complete access to all encrypted traffic.

Lavabit won a victory in court that allowed them to reveal the FBI's secret demand: turn over your SSL root certificate or go to jail. Quoting Wired:

“The representative of Lavabit indicated that Lavabit had the technical capability to decrypt the information, but that Lavabit did not want to ‘defeat [its] own system,’” the government complained.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan immediately ordered Lavabit to comply, threatening Levison with criminal contempt — which could have potentially put him in jail.

By July 9, Lavabit still hadn’t defeated its security for the government, and prosecutors asked for a summons to be served for Lavabit, and founder Ladar Levison, to be held in contempt “for its disobedience and resistance to these lawful orders.”

A week later, prosecutors upped the ante and obtained the search warrant demanding “all information necessary to decrypt communications sent to or from the Lavabit e-mail account [redacted] including encryption keys and SSL keys.”

With the SSL keys, and a wiretap, the FBI could have decrypted all web sessions between Lavabit users and the site, though the documents indicate the bureau still trying only to capture metadata on one user.

The complete document set can be found here.

So basically, in order to go after one person - and by all indications, that person is Edward Snowden - the FBI demanded the metadata for all Lavabit users, and then eventually demanded the keys to all Lavabit traffic, encrypted or not. In response, Lavabit shut their doors and risked criminal prosecution. I give them ten out of ten for integrity.

It's important not to read too much into this case with respect to the NSA's wiretapping program, by the way. The FBI and NSA are operating by different sets of rules with respect to how they are allowed to gather information, and the NSA in particular has their own secret court to approve their activities. Note, also, that the FBI is using a vacuum cleaner approach to go after one suspect, whereas the NSA is using a vacuum cleaner approach to profile literally everyone.

Thursday Miscellany!

• The government shutdown continues, but we can take some comfort in the fact that John Boehner has told his caucus that he won't let the nation default on its debts through a failure to raise the debt ceiling. Good thing, too, since a default would wreck the economy.


• Since Obama is apparently making peace with Iran, Israel's Likudniks are worried that he won't try to attack Iran. As such, Israel is now working on a coalition of Gulf states that will attack Iran instead.


• Dread Pirate Roberts, the former owner of the now defunct online black market Silk Road, is charged with hiring a hit man to torture and kill an employee-turned-informant. So much for the great libertarian experiment. Naturally Slashdot has a discussion.


• One victim of the government shutdown: NSA spying programs. Silver linings, right?


• By the way: the NSA tracked the cell phone signals of ordinary Americans in a pilot project. Just so you know.


• The case of Kaitlyn Hunt, the Florida woman who went to jail for sleeping with her high school freshman girlfriend while an 18-year-old senior, has ended with a plea bargain. She gets out of jail in December, and doesn't have to register as a sex offender. Which means that the social media life of this matter should end before Jan 1.


• What happens when you combine Barbara Cubed (pdf) with t-norm fuzzy logics? I don't know, but I intend to find out.

Wendy Davis running for Governor of Texas; is Democrats' best hope, but still an underdog

Al Jazeera America has the story:

Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator famous for staging a filibuster against sweeping abortion restrictions, announced Thursday that she will run for governor of the state.

"Texas is a place where we aim high and we take big risks," Davis told hundreds of cheering supporters at a rally outside Fort Worth. "We're builders, and doers, leaders, and dreamers. We love Texas, not only for how good it is, but for how great we know it can be."

There's a lot of enthusiasm for her campaign, due in no small part to her filibuster of an odious and stupid anti-abortion law. That same filibuster also generated a fair amount of campaign cash, to the tune of $1 million. It's almost certain that she'll win the Democratic primary.

And then, she'll be the underdog against the most likely GOP candidate, Gregg Abbot.

Texas Lyceum, Sept 6-20 (pdf)
Abbot 29
Davis 21
Don't know/NA 50
N=798 registered voters, MOE=3.47

Public Policy Polling, June 28-July 1 (pdf)
Abbot 48
Davis 40
Not sure 12
N=500, MOE=4.4

The numbers here aren't impossible for Davis. The election is thirteen months away, she's only down eight points, and she has plenty of time to make up the difference. But it's going to be a really tough fight.