Lavabit: Why it was forced to close down during the Edward Snowden fallout

Edward Snowden, NSA security contractor.

Edward Snowden, former NSA security contractor, was a Lavabit customer.

Last August we covered the shutting down of Lavabit, an encrypted email provider that was unfortunate to be used by former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden.

Ladar Levison, creator of Lavabit, chose to shut down the services of Lavabit instead of complying with the surrender of encryption keys for all Lavabit customers, to the NSA.

In April, Levison and Lavabit lost an appeal against the finding of being in contempt; the document can be read here.

In a blog post today at Lavabit.com, Levison announced more details about his personal and professional adventure, and explains the reasons why he was forced to close down Lavabit.

My Fellow Citizens,

My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to serve me with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment on my company’s network.

My company, Lavabit, provided email services to 410,000 people, and thrived by offering features specifically designed to protect the privacy and security of its customers. I had no choice but to consent to the installation of their device, which would have provided the government with access to all of the messages, for all of my customers, as they travelled to and from other providers on the Internet.

But that wasn’t enough. The federal agents also said their court order required me to surrender the company’s private encryption keys, and I balked. What they claimed to need were customer passwords, which were sent securely, so they could access the plain-text of messages for users taking advantage of my company’s encrypted storage feature. (The government would later claim they only demanded the encryption keys because of my “noncompliance”.) I didn’t realize until I retained an attorney that what the agents proposed would have exceeded their authority.

For the full blog post visit Lavabit.com.

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