Lavabit Relaunches Encrypted Email Service Years After Stading Up to the Surveillance State

Ladar Levison the CEO of Lavabit did something extraordinary when the FBI made demands on his encrypted email service back in 2013.

At the time, Levison was unable to speak about the details because of a gag order. He was told that if he spoke about the details of the case he would face serious criminal sanctions.

Eventually, it was discovered that the FBI demanded that Lavabit hand over the SSL keys of their encrypted email. The FBI didn't just want to know who was using the service they intended to masquerade as Lavabit and monitor the (no longer) encrypted messages of its users.

Instead of complying with the FBI and expose all of Lavabit's users Levinson shut down the service and terminated his company.

Edward Snowden, a former user of the end-to-end encrypted email service, called Lavabit's decision to close down in the face of mounting pressure: "Inspiring".

Lavabit is relaunching it's encrypted service, beginning with an invitation to its former users before making the service available to new customers.

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/20/encrypted-email-service-once-used-by-edward-snowden-to-relaunch/