> Nobody complains that they can [force?] Public Storage to open storage units with a warrant
If they can get a warrant from a court under fair laws, personally I don't mind the government having equivalent powers in the online world. There are people doing bad things online, and I want there to be mechanisms to minimise that.
I don't know the specifics of the Lavabit case, but from the NSA revelations, it seems like the controls and oversight are much weaker in the online world than in the physical one.
How do you defend yourself against a rogue government? Furthermore, who gets to define when a government becomes rogue? All definitions aside, how do you defend yourself from a large, well-funded organization that's determined to do what ever it wants to you? Fair laws? The fact that someone else decides what's right and wrong means we've already lost.
All of these questions are at least as pressing in the physical world as they are in the online one. So you're asking philosophical questions about the nature of government and the rule of law that I'm not properly qualified to answer.
I think there has to be a socially defined code of what behaviour is allowed and what is not - even without written laws, lynch mobs would enforce some kind of rules. Since people don't all agree on such things, many people will inevitably disagree with parts of that code. The question of how we decide on the code - both the written laws and the social conventions of overlooking some violations of those laws - is difficult. But we can't put society on hold and wait for the philosophers come up with a perfect system.
To take an example which almost everyone here will see from the same perspective: the UK government recently pushed for a form of opt-out web filtering. To HN readers, it was a clear sign of out-of-control government censorship, championed by politicians too out of touch to understand the internet. But plenty of other people were quite happy with the idea of web filtering. You may deride them as 'think of the children' types and media industry lobbyists, but that's how democracy works. You don't get your way just because you say your opponents are stupid. You have to persuade and educate people to get support for your position.
To be clear, I agree that the web filtering plan was a bad idea.
If they can get a warrant from a court under fair laws, personally I don't mind the government having equivalent powers in the online world. There are people doing bad things online, and I want there to be mechanisms to minimise that.
I don't know the specifics of the Lavabit case, but from the NSA revelations, it seems like the controls and oversight are much weaker in the online world than in the physical one.