Actually I was surprised that the article doesn't see the harm in "The Subpoena Argument" which although not overly burdensome, is both abusive and oppressive. The abuse and oppression is happening to the business and to the clients of that business. Lavabit was willing to provide the records for the account in question so the issue of providing SSL keys is moot. Add to that the Feds wanted live surveillance so Lavabit offered to do some coding for a fee of 3500 and the Feds refused. All in all Lavabit was compliant with the letter of the law. The ruling against Lavabit seems to have been expected to silence the owner but it backfired against the Feds.

I'm all for going after the bad guys but sometimes law enforcement agencies don't make themselves likable, especially when they can force someone to comply with what they want.

The problem I see with subpoenaing SSL keys is that they are not, in fact, evidence.

I was hoping to see more discussion on this point.

Are there other cases where subpoenas have been issued for tools that enable the gathering of evidence? Has that sort of thing always required a warrant?

Is it moot that a warrant was eventually issued? Or was the warrant only issued punitively because Lavabit didn't comply with the subpoena without regard to the validity of the subpoena in the first place?

I think it's becoming clear the legal system imagined by nerds is not the actual legal system. It's like watching somebody at an American football game who thinks they're at a soccer match.

"You can't throw the ball like that. Hand ball! 87 just knocked 12 over. Red card, red card! This ref is an idiot; he doesn't know any of the rules!"

Intellectual technologists may simply disagree with the premise of a law, rather than fail to understand it. You can't create new technologies with a mindset that sees only how things are, not how they could be better.

I think the number of comments saying X is unconstitutional/illegal vs X should be, reflects a failure to understand, not just disagreement. If you want to argue the legal system is based on immoral principles, go for it. If you want to argue the FBI broke the law, go for it. But figure out which argument you're making and don't conflate the two. I see a lot of comments that are basically, "in my perfect legal system, the FBI can't do this, so therefore the FBI can't do this in this legal system."

Should the government be able to order you to give a blood sample so they can pop out a clone of you, which they can then use to impersonate you towards _anyone_, say, your spouse, in order to potentially perform arbitrarily broad collection whos scope they'll hide under the guise of national security?

They're not asking for evidence, they order the operator of the service to be complicit in aiding the government in impersonating the service towards all of its users.

No, but unlike a blood sample, an encryption key is "just information."

It could be argued that DNA is 'just information'.

But a blood sample isn't.