

Lavabit appeals government order to divulge its private keys

Lavabit appeals government order to divulge its private keys




The 44-page document argues that the pen register statute--legislation originally focused on telephony but now routinely used to extract electronic data--does not authorize the US government to seize the email service's keys, nor does the Stored Communications Act.

Lavabit's appeal further states that the Fourth Amendment forbids the seizure of its SSL keys, and protects against the access of its customers' data.

“The Fourth Amendment insists that a warrant name particular things to be searched; a warrant that permits open-ended rummaging through all of Lavabit's communications data is simply a modern-day writ of assistance, the sort of general warrant that the Fourth Amendment was ratified to forbid."

The email service points out that officials forbade Lavabit from informing anyone, including its customers and partners, that it had compromised its security. According to the brief, government officials "insisted that all of those parties be affirmatively misled into believing that the system remained secure against exactly the kind of secret monitoring that the government was proposing."

Interestingly, Lavabit also details that it had proposed a compromise in turning over the target's (in this case almost certainly Edward Snowden) "login and subsequent logout date and time, the IP address used to connect" along with what it describes as "non-content headers" from any future emails sent or received by the subject's account.

