Secrets, lies and Snowden's email: why I was forced to shut down Lavabit

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.

My company, Lavabit, provided email services to 410,000 people –including Edward Snowden, according to news reports – and thrived by offering features specifically designed to protect the privacy and security of its customers. I had no choice but to consent to the installation of their device, which would hand the US government access to all of the messages – to and from all of my customers – as they travelled 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".)


Bothered by what the agents were saying, I informed them that I would first need to read the order they had just delivered – and then consult with an attorney. The feds seemed surprised by my hesitation...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-did-lavabit-shut-down-snowden-email

Lavabit and Silent Circle form "Dark Mail Alliance" to thwart email surveillance

Two encrypted-email companies that shut down while struggling to keep metadata out of the US government's hands haveannounced that they're teaming up to create a new, open-source email protocol based on security and privacy and that they plan to help the world to hopefully ditch the old one: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).

The collaboration, dubbed the Dark Mail Alliance, between founding companies Lavabit and Silent Circle, will be focused on maintaining and organizing the open-source code for the new email protocol.

The companies announced the alliance at Wednesday's Inbox Loveconference, held at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus, saying that they hope to "change the world of email completely by putting privacy and security at its core."

The two founding companies also plan to bring other members into the alliance and to assist future recruits to implement the new protocol.

Specifically, Lavabit and Silent Circle will work jointly to help email software developers and service providers proliferate what they're calling Email 3.0, a "private, next-generation, end-to-end encrypted alternative."...

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/11/01/lavabit-and-silent-circle-form-dark-mail-alliance-to-thwart-email-surveillance/