Ladar Levison, 32, has spent ten years building encrypted email service Lavabit, attracting over 410,000 users. When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was revealed to be one of those users in July, Dallas-based Lavabit got a surge of new customers: $12,000 worth of paid subscribers, triple his usual monthly sign-up. On Thursday, though, Levison pulled the plug on his company, posting a cryptic message about a government investigation that would force him to “become complicit in crimes against the American people” were he to stay in business. Many people have speculated that the investigation concerned the government trying to get access to the email of Edward Snowden, who has been charged with espionage. There are legal restrictions which prevent Levison from being more specific about a protest of government methods that has forced him to shutter his company, an unprecedented move.
....Levison plans to appeal the government’s request from him in the Fourth Circuit and has asked supporters to donate to his legal fund. As of Thursday night, hours after making the request, he had received $40,000. (Update, 8/10/13: As of Saturday morning, Lavabit’s legal defense fund is closing in on $90,000.)
....Levison isn’t an privacy absolutist. He has cooperated in the past with government investigations. He says he’s received “two dozen” requests over the last ten years, and in cases where he had information, he would turn over what he had. Sometimes he had nothing; messages deleted from his service are deleted permanently.
If the shutdown is a permanent one, Levison would be walking away from $50,000 to $100,000 in annual revenue, his primary source of income. He also walked away from his personal email address, which was shut down along with all the other Lavabit accounts.....
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/09/lavabits-ladar-levison-if-you-knew-what-i-know-about-email-you-might-not-use-it/
LAVABIT has worked with the government before, though, so the whole "privacy of our customers' information" argument might not be terribly persuasive. Simply by pulling the string it's entirely obvious that the target was Snowden.
Not all the customers were understanding, either...:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/lavabit-snowden/
...Reading between the lines, it’s reasonable to assume Levison has been fighting either a National Security Letter seeking customer information — which comes by default with a gag order — or a full-blown search or eavesdropping warrant.
Court records show that, in June, Lavabit complied with a routine search warrant targeting a child pornography suspect in a federal case in Maryland. That suggests that Levison isn’t a privacy absolutist. Whatever compelled him to shut down now must have been exceptional.
A voicemail to Lavabit went unreturned today.
Update 19:45: Lavabit has 350,000 users who aren’t Edward Snowden, and some are decidedly unhappy with Levison’s decision, judging by a flood of angry comments posted to Lavabit’s Facebook page this afternoon....
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