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, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.
What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.
This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.
Sincerely,
Ladar Levison
Owner and Operator, Lavabit LLC
Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.
We will never see this from any larger hosting or email sites. And for another interesting older read…
It’s the email service that Edward Snowden used to leak the information regarding NSA spying on email/cellphones/etc.
(gigaom.com) – Less than a month after it was identified as the email service that Edward Snowden used to leak NSA documents, LavaBit has suddenly and mysteriously shuttered.
The service’s creator, Ladar Levison, cited pending legal woes for the shutdown. Although he remained vague about the details, it’s likely to have something to do with the June scandal that rocked the nation:
”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, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.”
The privacy-minded email service had plenty of features that make it more secure than your typical email service — particularly asymmetrical encryption, which encrypts a message on Lavabit’s servers, requiring a password for anyone to read it. Lavabit’s focus on privacy means that not even the platform could read or analyze messages as they were transmitted, although that doesn’t seem to have stopped the site from being criminally implicated.
Levinson wrote that Lavabit has filed the proper papers to take the case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a favorable verdict could put the website back online. But he said the experience has significantly weakened his trust in the U.S. as a place to do business.
“This experience has taught me one very important lesson: Without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.”
This generation does not have enough people who care enough to save the constitution. Next generation wont have one that means anything. Sad, true. Oh well
Indeed. Dying breed it seems, and as all these new age hipsters with self righteous attitudes get up to our age it’ll be too fucking late for them to do anything.
Oh well. I’ll continue to do my part until I’m no longer able, or worse, no longer allowed…