Lavabit shutdown cites Federal coercion

[whitecoast]

Lavabit is an encrypted email service, favored by Snowden.
It recently announced that it was shutting down its service at Lavabit.com:

[quote author=Lavabit.com]

My Fellow Users,

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Sincerely,
Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC

Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.


[/quote]

The guardian has a more fleshed out article, but I think the announcement on the lavabit website just about says it all.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/08/lavabit-email-shut-down-edward-snowden

 

[grini]

Thanks for posting this, whitecoast! I was using lavabit email for paypal and ebay. Two days ago I was checking lavabit webmail and it was down, I thought it was because of maintenance, but, obviously, that was not the case.

 

[angelburst29]

An update:

US Government Mistakenly Leaks Snowden’s Name in Case Shuttered Lavabit
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13941228000350

Fri Mar 18, 2016 - The US government has accidentally leaked Edward Snowden’s name, letting slip the FBI’s real target in its legal pursuit of the email firm Lavabit.

The encrypted service was shut down following the NSA scandal, burying the secret name in the process, RT reported.

The classified identity of the FBI’s interest in the case would have remained unknown if not for the government’s oversight.

The federal authorities publicized a huge cache of case documents, redacting all the details about the individual, except one and, ironically, the most telling one: Edward Snowden’s email address, Ed_Snowden@lavabit.com, in an August 2013 document.

In 2013, shortly after Snowden leaked NSA documents disclosing vast surveillance programs operated by the US government, Lavabit owner Ladar Levison was compelled to install a pen/trap device on his servers to collect information about one of its unnamed subscribers.

When the federal case against Lavabit arose in June 2013, Levison of Dallas, Texas, was allegedly ordered to stay quiet about the subscriber in question under threat of contempt and even potentially jail time.

Amid secrecy, it was widely presumed that the subscriber the feds were looking for was former National Security Agency contractor Snowden, however, it has never been officially confirmed.

“Three years later, I still cannot tell you who they were after. I keep getting asked the question, and I can’t answer,” Levison told Wired, which for its part concluded: “Now, it appears he doesn’t have to. The government has answered for him.”

The case documents were posted on Pacer, an online databank of federal legal documents, on March 4. According to a report in Wired, the release was a “part Levison’s long battle for transparency” to get more of the documents unsealed and unedited in the case that eventually cost him his business.

Earlier this year, US authorities were ordered to re-release all “previously filed pleadings, transcripts, and orders” with everything unedited except “the identity of the subscriber and the subscriber’s email address.”

The case was finalized, when the government was allowed to redact other information, including that which might harm its investigation, Wired reported.

The court documents have been noticed only this week by the transparency site Cryptome, which posted them online.


US govt mistakenly leaks Snowden’s name in case that shuttered Lavabit
https://www.rt.com/usa/336053-government-leaks-snowden-lavabit/

The US government has accidentally leaked Edward Snowden’s name, letting slip the FBI’s real target in its legal pursuit of the email firm Lavabit. The encrypted service was shut down following the NSA scandal, burying the secret name in the process.


Cryptome
Lavabit Document Observation
https://cryptome.org/2013/12/lavabit-observation.htm