• Email service reportedly used by Snowden abruptly shuts down
    118 replies, posted
[QUOTE=mblunk;41766441]What bothers me the most about your posts is this logic. "Any government might go ahead and try breaking down businesses to gather information for purposes that boil down to childish revenge, so we should just accept that these innocent third parties will have to take it up the ass from uncle Sam and well-intentioned entrepreneurs will have their innovations destroyed in the mayhem but it's ok because everyone else [power-tripping] is jumping off the cliff too, right?" "Gag orders have been around forever, so they are inherently okay and can be applied at whim by governments, even (especially) when the governments appear to be violating their own country's people, but hey sometimes there are real uses for gag orders so who cares?" How do you not realize how shortsighted this reasoning is?[/QUOTE] He is blindly and stupidly pro-American, I wouldn't bother arguing with him.
[QUOTE=Adius Shadow;41764411]The world is falling apart[/QUOTE] All is cleansed in the fires of revolution, my friend.
[QUOTE=mblunk;41766441]What bothers me the most about your posts is this logic. "Any government might go ahead and try breaking down businesses to gather information for purposes that boil down to childish revenge, so we should just accept that these innocent third parties will have to take it up the ass from uncle Sam and well-intentioned entrepreneurs will have their innovations destroyed in the mayhem but it's ok because everyone else [power-tripping] is jumping off the cliff too, right?" "Gag orders have been around forever, so they are inherently okay and can be applied at whim by governments, even (especially) when the governments appear to be violating their own country's people, but hey sometimes there are real uses for gag orders so who cares?" How do you not realize how shortsighted this reasoning is?[/QUOTE] he does but he's just trying to stir shit up again there's a reason he was permabanned, ya know
[QUOTE=mblunk;41766441]What bothers me the most about your posts is this logic. "Any government might go ahead and try breaking down businesses to gather information for purposes that boil down to childish revenge, so we should just accept that these innocent third parties will have to take it up the ass from uncle Sam and well-intentioned entrepreneurs will have their innovations destroyed in the mayhem but it's ok because everyone else [power-tripping] is jumping off the cliff too, right?" "Gag orders have been around forever, so they are inherently okay and can be applied at whim by governments, even (especially) when the governments appear to be violating their own country's people, but hey sometimes there are real uses for gag orders so who cares?" How do you not realize how shortsighted this reasoning is?[/QUOTE] You're making leaps here. Two problems, #1 being that all indications point to a voluntary dismantling of the business not the US government coming up and saying they have to shut down. This is not the fabled prosecution you want to imply, nor an attempt to "gather information for purposes that boil down to childish revenge" when any western country would prosecute those who release secret information on their intelligence agencies. #2 is that I said that in response to a specific context - i.e. the first page. You're also specifically twisting what I said and trying to make it seem like I don't care what circumstances a gag order is applied in, which is childish to say the least.
[QUOTE=scout1;41764142]And your opinion on the case in the OP is that is an unlawful act, or an act made lawful? [url=http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1297362&p=41763897&viewfull=1#post41763897]Your original post[/url] specifies neither, nor have you clarified, merely posting a general disagreement with the government which we assume is behind this. The only thing you're clear on is that this is an "act of abuse". Now I would like to respond to that if you could just please clarify whether you think the US government is violating the law in this instance or whether you disagree with the existence of the laws that make this legal.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=catbarf;41765620]It's illegal, but it's obeying the law? When did 'illegal' start to mean 'something legal I disagree with'?[/QUOTE] why do you two always come in here and argue about the "rule of law" when it's completely irrelevant to the argument at hand? the issue is that it is a complete load of bollocks that you have to hand over personal data or be forced to nuke your website, REGARDLESS of whether or not it's within the bounds of the law (law is not absolute). that's a nice euphemism by the way. would you call the jim crow laws or the alien and sedition acts "something legal I disagree with"?
[QUOTE=BANNED USER;41764916]Are they so dense that they couldn't think of him having a backup email like [email]snowdenrussia@live.com[/email]? Better take down microsoft and yahoo mail services since he could easily have an account on those sites. Fuck it, take down Google mail for good measure, don't give that rat bastard Commie traitor any ability to communicate via email. That'll show em![/QUOTE] Well it's likely that that Yahoo, MS, and google already work with the government so they don't need to shut them down.
[QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;41766724]why do you two always come in here and argue about the "rule of law" when it's completely irrelevant to the argument at hand? the issue is that it is a complete load of bollocks that you have to hand over personal data or be forced to nuke your website, REGARDLESS of whether or not it's within the bounds of the law (law is not absolute).[/QUOTE] Do you think the court said "Hey if you nuke your website you don't have to listen to us"? I don't believe that happened, and would be very very surprised if the court thought that was a valid option. If you have information on a crime you can be [B]legally compelled[/B] to divulge that information under subpoena, material witness order, etc. Do you disagree with that, too? If a court orders a bystander to testify on a car accident and the guy instead flees the country because he can't legally disobey and doesn't want to testify, did the court force him out of the country? [QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;41766724] that's a nice euphemism by the way. would you call the jim crow laws or the alien and sedition acts "something legal I disagree with"?[/QUOTE] No I'd say that the law is immoral and needs to be changed. But it is, by definition, not illegal. It might be unconstitutional and unlawful but the supreme court disagreed at least one point that I can remember. So I'd still say it was legal, and by all other definitions constitutional too.
[QUOTE=scout1;41766831]Do you think the court said "Hey if you nuke your website you don't have to listen to us"? I don't believe that happened, and would be very very surprised if the court thought that was a valid option. If you have information on a crime you can be [B]legally compelled[/B] to divulge that information under subpoena, material witness order, etc. Do you disagree with that, too? If a court orders a bystander to testify on a car accident and the guy instead flees the country because he can't legally disobey and doesn't want to testify, did the court force him out of the country?[/quote] but it sure is a real morton's fork to have to be forced to comply with immoral laws or shut your website down. just because he wasn't forced doesn't mean he didn't have much choice. [quote]No I'd say that the law is immoral and needs to be changed. But it is, by definition, not illegal. It might be unconstitutional and unlawful but the supreme court disagreed at least one point that I can remember. So I'd still say it was legal, and by all other definitions constitutional too.[/QUOTE] and i'm saying that that [B]doesn't matter.[/B] yes it is technically within the bounds of the law, but that doesn't mean it's not wrong or immoral.
[QUOTE=TheCreeper;41766330]Wont you be at risk of losing E-Mail if your home connection goes down?[/QUOTE] My home connection is stable a fuck. I haven't had any unexpected downtime ever since I got it. And I'm willing to take the risk if it means that I won't get data mined on or risk loosing my existing emails.
[QUOTE=scout1;41765208]We do kind of have a history of letting that fly, if it really was in the public interest.[/QUOTE] The Republican Party also has a history of being more liberal than the Democrats. Look what happened. Just because something has a history of being a certain way doesn't mean you can assume it will continue to be that way.
[QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;41766937]but it sure is a real morton's fork to have to be forced to comply with immoral laws or shut your website down. just because he wasn't forced doesn't mean he didn't have much choice. [/QUOTE] You also have to pay your taxes or be investigated by the IRS, and a lot of people will call taxes immoral. This system, as well as legal prosecution for those failing to respond to court orders, is ubiquitous to the Western world. Why do we all use this system? It's not a strictly American institution. It's not rooted in some far-flung text. It's very simple in that the courts need to justly process all. We're going to assume again for a moment that this is about Snowden and, in a hypothetical, he has been extradited to the US to face charges. He claims evidence to his defense on their servers. They refuse to hand it over. Well now the company doesn't want to provide for the "Immoral non-american communist traitor!" Should they not be legally compelled to hand over the evidence? Would that be fair to Snowden, to deny all facts of his circumstances and pick and choose whether or not we want to see our Judicial branch properly executed? I assume you are not okay with Snowden, yourself, or anyone else being railroaded. The law must be applied equally for the prosecution, defense, and execution of the law. To do otherwise is to skew the system in favor of personal bias more so than it already allows. To that end this gentlemen is free to civilly disobey the court order. He will then be fined, or imprisoned depending on the severity of his breach and how much it affects the due process of the law. If he has actually destroyed all records, and that being what the US government was seeking, he is not going to be a very happy camper at the end of the day. At no point was he forced to shut down his service. He could have, for example, simply refused to hand them over. He would then probably have been raided by agents and the data seized or otherwise tracked, I'm not sure exactly what they were looking for. [QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;41766937] and i'm saying that that [B]doesn't matter.[/B] yes it is technically within the bounds of the law, but that doesn't mean it's not wrong or immoral.[/QUOTE] Yes, and nobody said the law is perfectly moral (especially since morality is subjective). But the appeal that it's "illegal!!!" is a logical fallacy, an emotional appeal. It's the same schtick as calling anything you don't like "unconstitutional!!" It invokes the feeling that your personal human rights are being violated. [editline]8th August 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=lavacano;41767063]The Republican Party also has a history of being more liberal than the Democrats. Look what happened. Just because something has a history of being a certain way doesn't mean you can assume it will continue to be that way.[/QUOTE] But the republican party is liberal, moreso than the democrats. They're classic liberals. Which makes a lot of sense, given their party is something like 150 years old. The platform has not changed terribly much, just the setting moved ahead of them. Which makes them look backwards by comparison.
[QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;41766724]why do you two always come in here and argue about the "rule of law" when it's completely irrelevant to the argument at hand? [/QUOTE] I'm not the one who said it's illegal. If it's completely irrelevant then attack AmericanInfantry for bringing it up in the first place. Saying 'it's illegal' when it clearly isn't (and yeah, technicality kinda matters when it's this black and white) is the usual excessive sensationalism. It's so much easier to get riled up about something when we can unilaterally declare it to be [B]illegal[/B] or [B]unconstitutional[/B] and not just... I don't know, a legal interpretation I don't agree with? Is there something inherently [I]wrong[/I] with that? Why do you need to declare it illegal? Why can't it just be a bad law? Does it really need that little touch of yellow journalism, that factually incorrect emotional appeal to try to breed outrage? [QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;41766724]the issue is that it is a complete load of bollocks that you have to hand over personal data or be forced to nuke your website, REGARDLESS of whether or not it's within the bounds of the law (law is not absolute).[/QUOTE] You're forced to hand over relevant criminal data in a court case. I'm sorry that in this case you don't want to see due process at work, but if it were a case about a key witness refusing to provide material evidence against a notorious criminal the thread would be full of people crying foul. That's the way our legal system works. If a court needs evidence, you provide evidence. Destroying the evidence may be a way 'out' but that's not the court's doing. We don't live in a society that can function by picking and choosing when our judicial system is allowed to operate, and when we can flaunt it and refuse to provide relevant evidence because we don't like the conditions of the trial. It's up to the court to make the decision of innocence or guilt, not the people holding relevant evidence. [QUOTE=SgtCr4zyGunz;41766724]that's a nice euphemism by the way. would you call the jim crow laws or the alien and sedition acts "something legal I disagree with"?[/QUOTE] Considering they were legal, and I disagree with them, yes. I'd also call them unjust and immoral laws. But I wouldn't call things which are [I]in the law[/I] illegal. That's just stupid. The law is not always right, but the law doesn't suddenly stop being the law and start being something else if you don't like it. I don't think the government should give tax breaks to the wealthy. That doesn't mean giving them tax breaks is an illegal act because I subjectively deem it so.
[QUOTE=Adius Shadow;41764411]The world is falling apart[/QUOTE] i don't get why everyone's so fatalistic about this. unless this was sarcasm.
[QUOTE=AJisAwesome15;41767580]i don't get why everyone's so fatalistic about this. unless this was sarcasm.[/QUOTE] Thinking it's your generation that's seeing the world go downhill seems be the most common form of egocentrism.
For the record I think the NSA has massively overstepped their bounds in regards to this whole thing but out of curiosity, [i]why[/i] are so many people here against what they do? Most of Facepunch seems to agree with the notion that while in public, you have no expectation of privacy. If you're walking down the street someone can photograph or record you and you have no recourse against this, aside from not going out in public. Is the internet not public? (Personally I feel that we [i]do[/i] deserve a certain degree of privacy, even in public, so I see no hypocrisy in being against widespread internet surveillance, but this view tends to be the rarer one)
[QUOTE=Zeke129;41767867]For the record I think the NSA has massively overstepped their bounds in regards to this whole thing but out of curiosity, [i]why[/i] are so many people here against what they do? Most of Facepunch seems to agree with the notion that while in public, you have no expectation of privacy. If you're walking down the street someone can photograph or record you and you have no recourse against this, aside from not going out in public. Is the internet not public? (Personally I feel that we [i]do[/i] deserve a certain degree of privacy, even in public, so I see no hypocrisy in being against widespread internet surveillance, but this view tends to be the rarer one)[/QUOTE] While the public nature of the internet is somewhat debatable, I think the biggest issue is that the NSA collects emails, which are most definitely not public. I don't consider anything I say to you to be private, but if we were having this debate via email or IM or some other form of non-public internet communication? That's [i]our[/i] business. I'm aware the NSA isn't reading every single email to see who's a terrorist and who isn't, but they do collect the data and that just feels like a massive breach of both privacy and trust.
I don't think our relations with other countries will improve if we keep up with the world-policing bullshit.
[QUOTE=General J;41768008]I don't think our relations with other countries will improve if we keep up with the world-policing bullshit.[/QUOTE] I wasn't aware other countries had a say in companies based in the United States
[QUOTE=Zeke129;41767867]For the record I think the NSA has massively overstepped their bounds in regards to this whole thing but out of curiosity, [I]why[/I] are so many people here against what they do? Most of Facepunch seems to agree with the notion that while in public, you have no expectation of privacy. If you're walking down the street someone can photograph or record you and you have no recourse against this, aside from not going out in public. Is the internet not public? (Personally I feel that we [I]do[/I] deserve a certain degree of privacy, even in public, so I see no hypocrisy in being against widespread internet surveillance, but this view tends to be the rarer one)[/QUOTE] The question here is what role technology plays. I could make the argument that a service brokered by a third party still inherently deserves some protection. If I give a note to a guy, who delivers it to another guy, I have a reasonable expectation that the government doesn't get to read the note, right? If I use a mail carrier like UPS, I still have some degree of privacy. So why would it disappear when it's a telecom company making the connection for me? I think, in my first example, that I can expect that my message is kept private. If the government asks my messenger, though, whether or not he carried a message from me and who it's going to, I think it's reasonable that he should be able to answer truthfully without violating my expectation of privacy. That's the distinction here, it's not about total surveillance, but about limited degrees regarding the 'metadata' of the message, the information that is being given directly to the messenger ('give this message to [y]') as opposed to the message itself. So far, despite the fear-mongering, that's what the documentation about the NSA has revealed.
Seems to me like the owner shut down his own site as a form of protest.
[QUOTE=scout1;41764072]Well it can't be lawful [B]and[/B] unlawful. Either the government did something unlawful (okay) or they made it lawful, in which case it can't be unlawful. You said it was both. I'm still wondering which you think it is. [highlight](User was permabanned for this post ("Still threadshitting with terrible arguments" - Craptasket))[/highlight][/QUOTE] praise the doge
I honestly hope our government keeps it up with this bullshit, and continues ramping up the intensity of their asshattery. Sooner or later, they'll fuck up [I]something[/I] that'll the masses actually care about by accident, and then maybe we'll have the raw numbers to do something to fight this insanity.
[QUOTE=Ekalektik_1;41767964]While the public nature of the internet is somewhat debatable, I think the biggest issue is that the NSA collects emails, which are most definitely not public. I don't consider anything I say to you to be private, but if we were having this debate via email or IM or some other form of non-public internet communication? That's [i]our[/i] business. I'm aware the NSA isn't reading every single email to see who's a terrorist and who isn't, but they do collect the data and that just feels like a massive breach of both privacy and trust.[/QUOTE] Reading people's emails is definitely problematic but that's a supposedly private thing still happening on a public network. The government reading them akin to saying you aren't allowed to protect your anonymity in public with a face mask. That's also a law Facepunch tends to support.
This is why i run my own email server.
[QUOTE=Chaoss86;41769666]This is why i run my own email server.[/QUOTE] what's your setup? just curious
[QUOTE=Zeke129;41768548]Reading people's emails is definitely problematic but that's a supposedly private thing still happening on a public network. The government reading them akin to saying you aren't allowed to protect your anonymity in public with a face mask. That's also a law Facepunch tends to support.[/QUOTE] Why does it matter in which way the private thing is transmitted? Americans have the USPS right? A public service provided by the government. That doesn't give the government the right to copy every single letter sent through their service and is very much illegal to open and read them.
[QUOTE=mobrockers;41771478]Why does it matter in which way the private thing is transmitted? Americans have the USPS right? A public service provided by the government. That doesn't give the government the right to copy every single letter sent through their service and is very much illegal to open and read them.[/QUOTE] Actually that example doesn't work because the USPS can open mail without a warrant. The carrier has legal custody in most cases. And yes it does matter how the private thing is transmitted. The internet especially because transmission is instantaneous, allowing plans to develop very quickly.
I have never heard of lavabit until today. Was it any good?
[QUOTE=Disotrtion;41773417]Actually that example doesn't work because the USPS can open mail without a warrant. The carrier has legal custody in most cases. And yes it does matter how the private thing is transmitted. The internet especially because transmission is instantaneous, allowing plans to develop very quickly.[/QUOTE] Wait what, USPS can open mail without a warrant???
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