Founder of service reportedly used by Edward Snowden said he would not be complicit in 'crimes against the American people'. ● Lavabit, an email service that boasted of its security features and claimed 350,000 customers, is no more, apparently after rejecting a court order for cooperation with the US government to participate in surveillance on its customers. It is the first such company known to have shuttered rather than comply with government surveillance. ● "I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit," founder Ladar Levison wrote on the company's website, reported by Xeni Jardin the popular news site Boing Boing.

France24: Encrypted email linked to US leaker closes. Russia Today: Encrypted email service used by Snowden shuts down not to be 'complicit in crimes against the American people'. BBC: Snowden link to encrypted email service closes

Ladar Levison/Lavabit: My Fellow Users,

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Sincerely,
Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC

Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.

Hollywood director Oliver Stone’s son Sean made news last year when he said he’d converted to Islam on Valentine’s Day while working on a film in Iran and that he believed then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was “misunderstood.”

Now the 28-year old actor and director is voicing his opinions on the Quran (“a very sensible book”), 9/11 (“an inside job”), Hezbollah (“don’t consider them to be terrorists”) and Iran (a “very civilized people”). The younger Stone, who says he is part Jewish and was baptized a Christian before converting to Shi’a Islam, shared his views in an interview last week with RT, the Russian government’s English-language television network.

“The Quran is a very sensible book. If you read it, frankly it makes a whole lot of sense regarding their interpretation of Jesus who they look to as a prophet. And obviously the Abrahamic lineage from Abraham to Moses are all very much respected in the Quran,” Stone said (emphasis added). Revealing opinions in line with so-called 9/11 “truthers,” Stone said, “9/11 was probably an inside job of some kind that it was not simply a rag-tag group of terrorists led by bin Laden who conducted this operation.” Speaking to an interviewer who expressed sympathy for his opinions, Stone called the U.S. war on terror in response to the attacks on the U.S. homeland “over a decade of constant fear mongering and aggression.”

Two Pennsylvanian children will live their lives under a gag order imposed under a $750,000 settlement. Two young children in Pennsylvania were banned from talking about fracking for the rest of their lives under a gag order imposed under a settlement reached by their parents with a leading oil and gas company. The sweeping gag order was imposed under a $750,000 settlement between the Hallowich family and Range Resources Corp, a leading oil and gas driller. It provoked outrage on Monday among environmental campaigners and free speech advocates. The settlement, reached in 2011 but unsealed only last week, barred the Hallowichs' son and daughter, who were then aged 10 and seven, from ever discussing fracking or the Marcellus Shale, a leading producer in America's shale gas boom.

Jason Ditz: NSA Searches All Messages To and From US ■ When the NSA insists they aren’t targeting Americans with their broad surveillance, the choice of language is deliberate and necessary: the law actually forbids them from doing so, as do the court orders. That doesn’t mean they don’t target us, of course, it just means they need to find a loophole. Today we learned one of those loopholes is to collect literally all emails and other text-based messages that involve a foreigner, figuring that if pressed they can insist the foreigner, not the Americans were the “target.” Stretching the credibility of this argument to the breaking point, the NSA reportedly also collects communication between Americans in which “information linked to foreigners” is cited, arguing that those conversations also technically involve the foreigner since he’s being mentioned.

Thomas Gaist: NSA reading content of Americans international communications ■ Thursday saw yet another revelation in the ongoing exposure of a cluster of unconstitutional surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other agencies of the US government. In a front page article, the New York Times revealed that vast quantities of emails sent and received by Americans communicating with people abroad are swept up, “cloned,” and combed through by NSA analysts, on the basis that the messages contain certain words or phrases deemed suspicious by the government. According to the Times, international data-sweeps target “apparently most” of the email traffic flowing to and from the US. The Times cited congressional testimony last June by NSA Deputy Director John Inglis, who replied to a lawmaker who asked if the agency listened to the phone calls or read the emails of American citizens by saying, “We do not target the content of US person communications without a specific warrant anywhere on the earth.” These words were carefully chosen to conceal a lie. NSA analysts supposedly do not “target” Americans, they just regularly and systematically seize their emails and examine their contents, without a warrant, if they happen to contain any one of an unknown number of “target” words.

The Guardian: NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone calls ■ The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden. ■ The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans' communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron Wyden told the Guardian that the law provides the NSA with a loophole potentially allowing "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans". ■ The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA's dragnet surveillance programs.

● Despite the Yemeni government already terming the terror plot in their nation “foiled,” US drones continue to pound the nation’s south and southeast, with three more attacks reported today in Maarib and Hadramawt Provinces, killing six in Maarib and three each in two attacks on Hadramawt.
● The latest two attacks targeted cars, and none of the slain were identified, though all have been dubbed “suspected militants” as is common practice in Yemen whenever the US kills somebody.
● The latest strikes mark eight in the last 10 days, with 34 reported killed overall. None of the victims of any of the strikes have been identified by name, and mostly the drones targeted cars traveling from one town to another.
● Officials have suggested the strikes were part of a campaign to foil a plot by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to take over several cities, mostly in Hadramawt, though since Yemen already dubbed that plot foiled it is unclear why the strikes are continuing.

● British warships are to visit Gibraltar in a show of strength in the stand-off with Spain over control of The Rock. Three ships including the frigate HMS Westminster will sail for the region on Monday even as the diplomatic row with Madrid escalates over plans for draconian border controls. The move comes just days after Gibraltar’s chief minister called for the British military to send forces into the area.
● David Cameron yesterday warned his Spanish counterpart to back down in the row over controls at the border with Gibraltar. The Prime Minister told Mariano Rajoy increased checks and plans to charge £43 to enter and leave the Rock were ‘totally disproportionate and unacceptable’ during a 15-minute phone call. It was seen as coded warning that Britain is prepared to take Spain to court if it goes ahead with measures which are seen to be in breach of European law. Officials admitted this could go as far as legal action in the European Court of Justice.
● After the call, Mr Cameron vowed: ‘Britain will always stand up for the people of Gibraltar.’ But hopes he had won concessions from Mr Rajoy were dashed as officials continued to impose tough border controls. News that British warships are heading to Gibraltar is likely to add to the tensions.

● A security training test created by a Defense Department agency warns federal workers that they should consider the hypothetical Indian-American woman a "high threat" because she frequently visits family abroad, has money troubles and "speaks openly of unhappiness with U.S. foreign policy."
● That slide, from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), is a startling demonstration of the Obama administration's obsession with leakers and other "insider threats." One goal of its broader "Insider Threat" program is to stop the next Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden from spilling classified or sensitive information.
● But critics have charged that the Insider Threat program, as McClatchy first reported, treats leakers acting in the public interest as traitors -- and may not even accomplish its goal of preventing classified leaks.

An Iowa mother is being advised by a civil rights organization after surveillance video recently emerged of her being viciously beaten by a police officer, apparently without provocation. Brandie Redell admits that she was trying to shoplift around $388 of women's clothing from the Von Maur department store in Davenport on February. Yet when she was caught and questioned by police she says that Officer Scott Crow repeatedly punched her, leaving her hospitalized with an eye swollen shut and vision that is now 70 per cent impaired. Crow remains in his job and Redell is planning legal action.