[joshuak]

I am not a lawyer, but having read through the decision it still seems to me that the fact someone is an asshole is strictly immaterial to the issue of weather or not it is reasonable/constitutionally allowable to issue a warrant of any kind that would:

1) Compromise the presumed privacy of any parties in addition to the target, much less every one of a businesse's clientele. (If you have a search warrant for a apartment, do you get to search all the apartments in the building? No, unreasonable search and seizure on the face of it.)

2) Cause material damages as to completely destroy the core business of an unrelated and presumed innocent business owner. Albeit asshole.

The government argued successfully that the warrant was “very narrow, specific”, but while that may be true in intent it is not true in effect. If in order to tap one suspected criminal it is necessary to undermine the right to privacy of one or more innocent bystanders (much less many) law enforcement and the court's hands must necessarily be tied.

That a citizen would be resistant to this seems reasonable. So what is left should only be a question as to how much being an asshole to the FBI constitutes contempt of court.

[tptacek]

I'm not a lawyer either, but if you reread my comment, you'll see that my issue here is that Levison had an opportunity to work with the DOJ without compromising all of his users: the production of his TLS keys wasn't litigated until after he had stonewalled DOJ over narrower requests.

[joshuak]

That is difficult to assert since as soon as the DOJ finally did install the tap and got encrypted traffic (as he had told them they would from the beginning) they immediately insisted on the keys.

I can't imagine they would not have demanded the keys if only he had been more cooperative from the beginning. And it is not unreasonable to believe he was fearful of that outcome from the beginning. In fact as part of the tap order he objected to he was required to "assist" which even the court noted was an ambiguous requirement (although avoided a decision on that issue).

[tptacek]

Look back a page, and check out my original comment. Levison offered a solution where he'd provide the decrypted information the DOJ wanted, but it was rejected, because:

* By the time he suggested it, he had demonstrated hostility to DOJ's cause

* He refused to provide timely updates, instead dictating that information would be provided only at the conclusion of the monitoring window

[joshuak]

The original order allowed law enforcement to [“capture all non-content dialing, routing, addressing, and signaling information . . . sent from or sent to” the target’s account.] (note "non-content")

Levison told the FBI when first contacted that he could not do this because of the encryption mode the target used. He told the FBI [“Lavabit did not want to ‘defeat [its] own system.’”] presumably by disclosing it's private keys for the ssl traffic. Only later did he come up with a way that he could comply with this order without disclosing Lavabit's private keys, but by the next day that was already too late because:

That very same day as the first order the FBI got a new broader order that [instructed Lavabit to “provide the [FBI] with unencrypted data pursuant to the [Pen/Trap] Order” and reiterated that Lavabit was to provide “any information, facilities, or technical assistance . . . under the control of Lavabit . . . [that was] needed to provide the FBI with the unencrypted data.”]

So this is where I make my point above, that this seems over reaching, and Levison's reactions from that point forward are understandable if argumentative. It is only after this point that one could argue he "demonstrated hostility".

--

However, it should be noted here that this appeals court decision does not ratify the magistrate judge's approval of a wire tap or the original court's decision against Levison and Lavabit. This decision even notes that Levison fails to make the arguments I made above so cannot consider them.

[drewcrawford]

Let's stipulate for the purposes of this thread that he broke the law, was a jerk, and did a morally wrong thing.

None of that is justification to violate the privacy of innocent third parties.

[tptacek]

You have no evidence that any such violation occurred, and neither do I.