Lavabit and darkmail

The M3AAWG keynote address today was a talk from Ladar Levinson about the shut down of Lavabit mail service after receiving demands from the NSA to hand over their SSL keys.
@maawg tweeted different quotes from the session. There is a conflict between privacy and security, and these are questions we need to resolve.
Ladar talked about his potential new service called darkmail, which pushes encryption back to the user level. I think there is relevance to this, as many online services are used for political and other organizing. As someone said to me last night, some of the people using our service could be killed if we don’t protect their privacy. He wasn’t speaking of the US residents, but people in places like Ukraine or Arab countries or other places undergoing violent revolutions.
Privacy is important, how we treat privacy is important. Handing over SSL keys to governments strikes me as a big problem.

Brian Krebs wins the Mary Litynski award
So much to write about

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At least in the beginning of the email spam problem, we didn’t have botnets. Now, at the beginning of the curve for SMS spam, we already have self replicating botnets. I’m afraid the good guys might be behind on this issue.
Then again I might just be cranky because SMS spammers woke us up at 4:30 am.
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