NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden used the cryptographic email service Lavabit, an online email service that “offered significant privacy protection for their users’ email” due to privacy concerns of widely-used email services like Google’s Gmail.
Just last week, Lavabit decided to close its doors and shut down their service.
Here was their reasoning:
“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 LLCDefending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.”
Can you imagine how hard this must have been to do?
The more this becomes a heated issue, I’m beginning to question my use of Gmail more and more; but finding an email service without physical ties to the United States is no easy feat.
Not to mention Facebook, Twitter and Google+ activity.
Why Christians Should Care
One of the biggest arguments I hear from Christians sound something like, “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
This passive attitude is not the kind of response we should have. Once privacy is eroded, there’s no barrier to prevent the hijacking of other freedoms. You know, like freedom of religion. The stuff Christians should care about. Stuff that makes assembling every Sunday legal. Or even evangelism in general possible (try spreading the Gospel in India).
I’ll forgo the usual conspiracy kind of things—like “rounding-up” the Christians like Hitler did the Jews—and I understand that we must be willing to become martyrs of the faith, but the longer we can preserve these freedoms the better.
If you care about using social media as an evangelism tool or the right of assembly, you should care about Internet privacy—this is the first line of defense.
How far are you willing to go to protect Internet privacy?
Have you second guessed services like Gmail and others?
Kurt Bennett says
My position has pretty much been to do what it takes to get the bad guys. But as the erosion of the first amendment continues, I’m becoming more and more uncomfortable with my big brother looking over my shoulder. (Even though I have nothing to hide!) Your post nudged me even further out of my comfort zone.
Eric Dye says
Thank you for your feedback, Kurt, I really appreciate it. Thank you for reading, too! 🙂