The head of Lavabit — one of two small encrypted email providers that just closed down pre-emptively rather than fight federal government demands — “says he’s been told it’s illegal even to discuss what demand the feds made of him.” [Kashmir Hill/Forbes, more, TechCrunch, Guardian] “Wyden’s constant references to location tracking in this context would be nothing short of bizarre unless he had reason to believe that the governments assurances on this score are misleading, and that there either is or has been some program involving bulk collection of phone records.” [Julian Sanchez, Cato] “The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership” [Bruce Schneier, Bloomberg] “A Guide to What We Now Know About the NSA’s Dragnet Searches of Your Communications” [Brett Max Kaufman, ACLU] The Cato Institute has filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to accept a case challenging the legality of current programs of mass surveillance, in a case filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
More: No right to noisy exit? “Feds Threaten To Arrest Lavabit Founder For Shutting Down His Service” [TechDirt] And now (Sunday): with no charges and no arrest, authorities at Heathrow held and interrogated the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald (who has exposed the NSA program) for nine hours, exactly as long as they could under Britain’s anti-terror law without pressing a charge. They also confiscated his phone, laptop, USB sticks and other electronic gear. [Guardian, Greenwald, NY Times, Lowering the Bar, Peter Maass/NYT Magazine (filmmaker and Greenwald collaborator Laura Poitras regularly detained and interrogated at airports), Joel Mathis/Philly Mag] But see The Spectator (Miranda “carrying encrypted files from Snowden to Greenwald”).
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