Wouldn't the FBI have the technical capability to use optical character recognition to digitise the keys to actual text? Or maybe it's too small to be legible to a high DPI scanner? I really admire Lavabit here, they're not dealing with your average Joe, they're dealing with the American Government and that costs money. Everyone has the chance to help potentially make history by supporting Lavabit and donate to its legal fund.
Many would have just given up the moment things escalated, but Ladar Levison never gave in and fought for the privacy of his users at the cost of his profitable business and life. The cards are stacked against him, but he didn't let it get in the way of trying to fight the case and have it made publicly.
How many other companies have secretly complied with similar requests we don't know about? United States of America, the land of the free, right?
A simple character flip in a single letter would make the key unusable. ocr is fairly good, but it's not uncommon that you get a handful of errors. That's usually fine if the result is meant for humans, but here, 99.9% correct is not enough, you need 100% correctness.
Many would have just given up the moment things escalated, but Ladar Levison never gave in and fought for the privacy of his users at the cost of his profitable business and life. The cards are stacked against him, but he didn't let it get in the way of trying to fight the case and have it made publicly.
How many other companies have secretly complied with similar requests we don't know about? United States of America, the land of the free, right?