Ladar Levison, Owner and Operator of Lavabit, Edward Snowden’s email provider has been shut down amid a secret court battle. He’s my latest hero. He dared to stand up for our country and it’s rouge government. FYI, here’s his story: When Edward Snowden emailed journalists and activists in July to invite them to a briefing at the Moscow airport during his long stay there, he used the email account “edsnowden@lavabit” according to one of the invitees. Texas-based Lavabit came into being in 2004 as an alternative to Google’s Gmail, as an email provider that wouldn’t scan users’ email for keywords. Being identified as the provider of choice for the country’s most famous NSA whistleblower led to a flurry of attention for Lavabit and its encrypted email services, from journalists, and also, apparently, from government investigators. Lavabit founder Ladar Levison announced Thursday that he’s shutting down the company rather than cooperating with a government investigation (presumably into Snowden). Lavabit’s website now displays a message about the shutdown, available in full below, along with a request for help paying the legal bill to fight the government in court. “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,” writes Levison. “After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations.” Presumably, the government is seeking access to Edward Snowden’s email, email metadata, passwords or encryption keys. And presumably, Levison doesn’t want to grant that access. “I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States,” writes Levison, based on his experience. This message seems to be a loud and clear one. Washington, D.C.-based think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation predicts that U.S. cloud companies will lose from $21.5 to $35 billion over the next three years. They admit that it is a “rough guess” based on surveys about the chilling effects of the NSA leaks on cloud businesses.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:55:36 +0000
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