Secret NSA Authority Shuts Down Lavabit

Thursday, August 8th was just another snapshot of the scary power that the NSA wields without restraint. The NSA has shut down Lavabit for reasons that the owner himself, Ladar Levison, cannot even discuss. In a posting Levison made on the Lavabit website he stated that the company is shutting down rather than become “complicit in crimes against the American people.” These are strong words from Levison, and they are ominous ones as well. America is now under the jurisdiction of a secret court with top secret confidential status.

How we came to this legal quagmire is irrelevant at this point, the question now is how to end it. Legitimate organizations are being forced into playing the NSA’s game unless they risk the retribution of the Federal Government. Obviously this move was part of a larger effort to learn anything they can about Edward Snowden. The fact that the NSA didn’t know so much about him is rather ironic given the unique and creepy tools they possessed.

Obviously the NSA is in search of any digital relics that could have belonged to Snowden. This includes user accounts, emails, stored files, or even contacts. According to private detectives searching for Snowden leaks, someone under the name Ed Snowden had created three addresses with that specific Dallas Company. Did Snowden have any person connection with Lavabit? Who knows really, but the question stands due to the actions of Lavabit’s owner Ladar Levison. Most companies would rather exist than stand up in defense of one man that the most powerful country on earth wants in a cell. Yet Levison exchanged his entire company for Edward Snowden’s privacy. While this effort is comforting to see in an internet company that values your privacy it’s also confusing. Until the American people can get more concrete answers and transparency it’s clear that no one is going to know what’s really going on to this company. Attempting to get FISA documents revealed are incredibly difficult if not downright impossible. Atop of that the Government seems entirely complicit in the NSA’s actions which is downright despicable. This is truly the result of a post 9/11 world in which fear allowed us to trade in our greatest rights for the delusion of more protection. In reality we have ended up with a true big brother that makes China and Russia look like the land of the free and the brave.

The existence of a secret court in American history is terrifying and stands against the reputation this country has built for itself. Yet more and more each day we are seeing the paint vanish from the facade of a once free and great country that had respect for its people. With each passing year the facade decays more and more leaving us with a land of no privacy and complete judgment. Is this really the dialogue we wish to speak to the future generation of children? Do we really want to risk this privacy invasion for security and can we afford to maintain this system? Can we afford to continually upgrade our spying equipment at every turn, spending untold billions each year? The reality is that we cannot sustain either one of these proposals. America was not meant to have an invasive domestic spying network run by the government nor can it continue to bleed money each year while throwing seemingly unlimited resources into defense. At some point we are going to have to wake up and decide what future we really want.