[ExI] lavabit.com takedown

David Lubkin lubkin at unreasonable.com
Fri Aug 9 14:00:38 UTC 2013


I wrote:

 > That's one of the gotchas I mentioned in my posting about the business
 > I'm thinking of kicking off. Its success depends on my customers
 > trusting me with what might be confidential data. Which I'd thought

Eugen replied:

>Your customers shouldn't have to trust you.

There are many businesses where they do. I can't prepare someone's taxes,
diagnose their cancer, or do a structural analysis of an architectural design
without being trusted with confidential data. Even if it's done in their
physical presence and scrutiny, I retain knowledge of what I saw, and may
be able to take nefarious advantage of it. Nearly every job I've ever had
required trusting me.

There are also businesses, and mine could be viewed as such, whose
*purpose* is to be trustworthy, to provide a reliable, neutral intermediary
between two or more mutually suspicious parties.

> > about in terms of technologies, policies, and trustworthy staff. Now
> > I have to think about what to do if their data is demanded. I don't mind
> > complying so much as potentially having to conceal that compliance
> > from my users.
>
>If you built your offering on top of something like Tahoe LAFS,
>you *couldn't* comply, even if you wanted to.

Thanks. It's worth knowing about options where it's feasible, and there
may be parts of the data I hold or work on that can use something like
that.


-- David.




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