Free Republic

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt recently publicly protested alleged U.S. government spying on Google data centers. “The NSA allegedly collected the phone records of 320 million people in order to identify roughly 300 people who might be a risk," he said. The massive Government Matrix invasion of privacy only emphasizes the dramatic actions of 32-year-old Lavabit founder Ladar Levison. In August, rather than give the government the key to unlock the content of his 400,000 paying subscribers, Levison pulled the plug on the encrypted email service he spent ten years to build. “All this information is being compiled, archived, indexed...

In recent months, Lavabit, based in Texas, and Silent Circle, based in Washington, D.C., both shuttered their encrypted email services. The companies said they couldn’t keep them running knowing they were vulnerable to surveillance if faced with a dedicated enough attacker… which for Lavabit came in the form of the federal government when it wanted access to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s Lavabit account. Now the companies are teaming up with plans to offer an open-source tool that could make peer-to-peer, end-to-end encryption an easy add-on for any email service.

"Lavabit won a victory in court and were able to get the secret court order [which led to the site's closure] unsealed. The ACLU's Chris Soghoian called it the nuclear option: The court order revealed the FBI demanded Lavabit turn over their root SSL certificate, something that would allow them to monitor the traffic of every user of the service. Lavabit offered an alternative method to tap into the single user in question but the FBI wasn't interested. Lavabit could either comply or shut down. As such, no U.S. company that relies on SSL encryption can be trusted with sensitive...

The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too. There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum. What to do? What to do? I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure it out. And the conclusion I've reached is that there is no way to continue doing Groklaw, not long term, which is incredibly sad. But it's good to be realistic. And the simple truth is, no matter how good the motives might be for collecting and screening everything we say...

The owner of the encrypted email service used by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden says he could face criminal charges for refusing to comply with a secret federal court order issued last week. Ladar Levison abruptly shut down his company, Lavabit LLC, last week to avoid being forced to hand over customers’ personal information and communications. James Trump, a senior litigation counsel at the US attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, contacted Levinson’s lawyer on August 8 - the day Levinson ended Lavabit’s services, NBC News reported. The attorney was told that Levison had “violated the court order,” leading to speculation...

In a recent development eerily resembling a combination of both George Orwell’s custodian surveillance-state novel “1984,” and Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” in which individuals simply refuse to participate under a corrupt system, a Texas based e-mail provider announced to its customers yesterday that it would terminate operations, rather than “become complicit in crimes against the American people.” The decision was abrupt, and surprised many. Industry insiders are speculating that Lavabit has not provided more details, as contact from the Federal Government may have included a so called, “gag order,” preventing Lavabit’s owner, Ladar Levison, from providing his clients with...

The email service reportedly used by surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden abruptly shut down on Thursday after its owner cryptically announced his refusal to become "complicit in crimes against the American people."Lavabit, an email service that boasted of its security features and claimed 350,000 customers, is no more, apparently after rejecting a court order for cooperation with the US government to participate in surveillance on its customers. It is the first such company known to have shuttered rather than comply with government surveillance."I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or...

The highly encrypted email service reportedly used by NSA leaker Edward Snowden has gone offline - and its administrator claims the company is legally barred from explaining why. On Thursday, the homepage of Lavabit.com was changed to a letter from the company’s owner announcing that the site’s operations have ceased following a six-week long ordeal that has prompted the company to take legal action in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Now in the midst of an escalating fight from the federal government aimed at cracking down on encrypted communications, one of the last free and secure services has thrown...

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,...