Why Lavabit Shut Down

An anonymous reader writes "Ladar Levison, founder of the encrypted email service Lavabit that shut down last year because of friction with U.S. government data requests, has an article at The Guardian where he explains the whole story. He writes, 'My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment on my company's network. ... I had no choice but to consent to the installation of their device, which would hand the U.S. government access to all of the messages – to and from all of my customers – as they traveled between their email accounts other providers on the Internet. But that wasn't enough. The federal agents then claimed that their court order required me to surrender my company's private encryption keys, and I balked. What they said they needed were customer passwords – which were sent securely – so that they could access the plain-text versions of messages from customers using my company's encrypted storage feature. (The government would later claim they only made this demand because of my "noncompliance".) ... What ensued was a flurry of legal proceedings that would last 38 days, ending not only my startup but also destroying, bit by bit, the very principle upon which I founded it – that we all have a right to personal privacy.'"

Comments

I'll tell you why lavabit was shut down.

[amosh]

Lavabit shut down because it was founded by a moron who was more interested in living up to his glorious libertarian ideals than actually living in the real world. I understand that in your Galtean paradise the fact that you had some neat tech was enough, but outside of Ayn Rand's masturbatory fantasies, you need to be aware of the rules of the world you live in. Rules like, "Do not give the finger to a judge." Rules like "If you want something to be secure, you need to have a legal team ready to go BEFORE, not AFTER, you are called into court."

Face it - your glorious security was defeated by social engineering, YOU were the weakest link. Goodbye!