{"id":30994,"date":"2017-04-10T10:09:38","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T14:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opensource.im\/?p=30994"},"modified":"2017-04-10T10:09:38","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T14:09:38","slug":"a-government-error-just-revealed-snowden-was-the-target-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/euvolution.com\/open-source-convergence\/edward-snowden\/a-government-error-just-revealed-snowden-was-the-target-in.php","title":{"rendered":"A Government Error Just Revealed Snowden Was the Target in &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><p>        Slide: 1        \/        of 2 .      <\/p>\n<p>        Caption: Christian Charisius\/AP      <\/p>\n<p>        Slide: 2        \/        of 2 .      <\/p>\n<p>        Caption: Document from the Lavabit case mistakenly        made public by the government showing Edward Snowden's        email address was the target of the 2013        investigation.      <\/p>\n<p>    Its been one of the worst-kept secrets for years: the identity    of the person the government was investigating in 2013 when it    served the secure email firm Lavabit with a court order    demanding help spying on a particular customer.  <\/p>\n<p>    Ladar Levison, owner of the now defunct email service, has been    forbidden since then, under threat of contempt and possibly    jail time, from identifying who the government was    investigating. In court documents from the case unsealed in    late 2013, all information that could identify the customer was    redacted.  <\/p>\n<p>    But federal authorities recently screwed up and revealed the    secret themselves when they published a cache of case documents    but failed to redact one identifying piece of information about    the target: his email address, <a href=\"mailto:Ed_Snowden@lavabit.com\">Ed_Snowden@lavabit.com<\/a>. With    that, the very authorities holding the threat of jail time over    Levisons head if he said anything have confirmed what everyone    had long ago presumed: that the target account was Snowdens.  <\/p>\n<p>    The documents were posted on March 4 to the federal court    system known as Pacer as part of Levisons long battle for    transparency in the case that ruined his business. They were    spotted this week by the transparency site Cryptome and    published online.  <\/p>\n<p>    Heres a quick recap of that case:    On June 28, 2013, shortly after newspapers published the first    NSA leaks from Snowden, FBI agents showed up at Levisons door    in Texas and served him with a pen register order requiring him    to give the government metadata for the email activity of one    customers account.  <\/p>\n<p>    The case was initially sealed and the public didnt learn about    it and the fight over Levisons customer until after he had    shuttered his email service in defiance of the government. But    even after he closed Lavabit and there was no hope of the    government obtaining information about the account that it had    been seeking, the target was never identified. When some of the    documents in the case were finally unsealed in redacted form in    October 2013, however, the unredacted parts left little doubt    that the Lavabit case was about Snowden, who was known to be    using a Lavabit account in the spring of 2013 when his first    NSA leaks were published and when he was hiding in a safe house    in Hong Kong. It was still an educated guess, however.  <\/p>\n<p>    Cut to now. With the Lavabit case long ended, Levison has kept    fighting to get more of the documents unsealed and unredacted.    Hes been using money raised by supporters back in 2013 to fund    the fight for transparency. He filed a motion in December    asking an appeals court to unseal documents and vacate a    non-disclosure order that has silenced him about the target. It    turns out he was a little more successful in that latter    request than he thought he waswith a little help from a    government error. After a hearing earlier this year, a court    denied his motion to unseal and vacate but ordered US attorneys    in the case to re-release all previously filed pleadings,    transcripts, and orders with everything unredacted except the    identity of the subscriber and the subscribers email address.    After some negotiation, the government got the court to agree    to let it redact other information as well that might harm its    investigation into the target.  <\/p>\n<p>    Then the government messed up. When the documents were    re-posted to Pacer this month, Snowdens Lavabit email address    was left unredacted in plain sight in an August 2013 document.  <\/p>\n<p>    When asked for comment, Levisons lawyer Jesse Binnall told    WIRED in an email that due to the letter and spirit of the    courts January 7, 2016 order, Lavabit has no further comment    on the unredacted email address.  <\/p>\n<p>    Binnall is referencing the January 2016 order in which the    court denied Levisons motion to unseal records and vacate the    non-disclosure order in the case.  <\/p>\n<p>    WIRED spoke with Levison, prior to his learning that the    government had made the redaction error, about his struggle to    obtain transparency. Three years later, I still cannot tell    you who they were after. I keep getting asked the question, and    I cant answer.  <\/p>\n<p>    Now, it appears he doesnt have to. The government has answered    for him.  <\/p>\n<p><!-- Auto Generated --><\/p>\n<p>Read the rest here:<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/2016\/03\/government-error-just-revealed-snowden-target-lavabit-case\/\" title=\"A Government Error Just Revealed Snowden Was the Target in ...\">A Government Error Just Revealed Snowden Was the Target in ...<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Slide: 1 \/ of 2 . Caption: Christian Charisius\/AP Slide: 2 \/ of 2 . <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-snowden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euvolution.com\/open-source-convergence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30994"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euvolution.com\/open-source-convergence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euvolution.com\/open-source-convergence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euvolution.com\/open-source-convergence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euvolution.com\/open-source-convergence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/euvolution.com\/open-source-convergence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euvolution.com\/open-source-convergence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euvolution.com\/open-source-convergence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euvolution.com\/open-source-convergence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}