> There was a warrant, but he wanted to charge $3.5k for the effort. I don't know how I feel about that.
How would you feel if the police/FBI came to you with a warrant that requested all video footage from outside your home so they could spy on your neighbor's comings and goings. Oh, and by the way, you don't have a security camera system, and they aren't going to reimburse you to install one. If you do not produce video evidence, you are then disobeying the warrant and are in contempt of court.
Lavabit's system was not designed to listen in to one persons communications. It would cost money to implement that system. He requested he be compensated for his effort ($3500 is a piddly amount of money anyways), and they came back and said that was too much effort, so they'll take the entire thing. Back to the analogy, should the cops/FBI be able to possess your home in order to spy on your neighbor because you don't have a security system installed?
your analogy is wrong, it'd be more like "should the cops be able to get keys to your house".
In fact , it isn't even that, it's "should the cops be able to see who is coming in and out of your house, and searching them when they come in".
How did Lavabit's system work? I mean at one point there's an entry point, and the FBI wanted the info for the metadata, so just checking at the entry point for who's logging in would do it. You're going to have to convince me that it's non-trivial to implement something to scrape the metadata at the door (as in more than a couple hours work at most).
I don't know how to feel about it because $3500 is way too much money for what is asked, if this were a contracting job, and I think that if the police have a warrant for something they are reasonably entitled to what they're looking for. But asking people to do work without compensation.... I feel like there must be a precedent somewhere. At one point things become obstruction. I don't know what we should consider to be reasonable in these situations.
Remember that Levinson was not just a private contractor looking for work; taking time to build a whole new wiretapping system into his product wouldn't just cost him development time, but it's an opportunity cost as well, since he could have spent that time otherwise developing his business.
As for the triviality of implementing a metadata tap, I don't think the FBI was looking just for Snowden's IP address and browser. IIRC, they wanted metadata from his communications: email titles, recipient email addresses, time of transmission, etc. Lavabit was designed in a way that this was impossible. Levinson would have had to implement a system that flagged particular users and then saved metadata before encryption.
In a production, business environment, this isn't just a one-liner. Especially given the security-focused nature of Lavabit, the required development time and effort makes $3500 appropriate for the task.
How would you feel if the police/FBI came to you with a warrant that requested all video footage from outside your home so they could spy on your neighbor's comings and goings. Oh, and by the way, you don't have a security camera system, and they aren't going to reimburse you to install one. If you do not produce video evidence, you are then disobeying the warrant and are in contempt of court.
Lavabit's system was not designed to listen in to one persons communications. It would cost money to implement that system. He requested he be compensated for his effort ($3500 is a piddly amount of money anyways), and they came back and said that was too much effort, so they'll take the entire thing. Back to the analogy, should the cops/FBI be able to possess your home in order to spy on your neighbor because you don't have a security system installed?