cross-referenced news and research resources about
Lavabit email service provider
Lavabit was an email service.
Lavabit was founded in 2004 by Texas-based programmers who formed Nerdshack LLC, renamed Lavabit LLC the next year, prompted by privacy concerns about Gmail, Google's free, widely-used email service, and their use of the content of users' email to generate advertisements and marketing data. Lavabit offers significant privacy protection for their users' email, including asymmetric encryption, a level of encryption that is difficult for even intelligence agencies to crack. Ghacks called it "probably the most secure, private email service right now". As of July 2013, they had about 350,000 users and offered free and paid accounts with levels of storage ranging from 128 megabytes to 8 gigabytes.
Lavabit received media attention in July 2013 when it was revealed that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden was using the Lavabit web address edsnowden@Lavabit.com to email human rights lawyers and activists to a press conference during his confinement at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow.
On August 8, 2013, Lavabit shut down and their webpage was replaced by a message from owner Ladar Levison. He wrote that he was legally unable to explain why he shut down the service and solicited donations to "fight for the Constitution" in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Wired speculated that Levison was fighting a warrant or national security letter seeking customer information under extraordinary circumstances, as Lavabit had complied with at least one routine warrant in the past.
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updated Thu. February 22, 2024
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Observer
February 9, 2017
Lavabit. Made famous as the email provider of choice for NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Lavabit will soon return with three levels of service, ranging from user-friendly encryption to there-are-black-helicopters-everywhere mode, as The Intercept reported. Ladar Levison, its creator, has created a new methodÃâà...
The Verge
January 22, 2017
On January 20th, Lavabit founder Ladar Levison published a note announcing that he was relaunching Lavabit. He explained that while much has changed since the site was originally closed down, “much has not in our post-Snowden world,” and alluded to some of the major email leaks that demonstratedÃâà...
TechCrunch
June 24, 2016
Ladar Levison's three-year fight for freedom to speak about the government order that shuttered Lavabit, his secure email service, is finally over. Levison was finally able to confirm today that Lavabit was targeted by the government during its investigation into the Edward Snowden leaks. Although Apple'sÃâà...
WIRED
March 17, 2016
It's been one of the worst-kept secrets for years: the identity of the person the government was investigating in 2013 when it served the secure email firm Lavabit with a court order demanding help spying on a particular customer. Ladar Levison, owner of the now defunct email service, has been forbiddenÃâà...
VentureBeat
March 3, 2016
Lavabit, a company that operated an encrypted email service for more than 400,000 people — reportedly including NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden — before it shut down in 2013 under legal pressure from the FBI, rose from the dead today. In a federal court filing, the company came out in defense ofÃâà...
The Guardian
May 22, 2014
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 wouldÃâà...
The Verge
October 7, 2013
Ladar Levison is having a rough summer. It's a little less than two months since the Lavabit founder was forced to shutter his secure email service amid legal complications. While the tech press has been piecing through the details, Levison has been slugging it out in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals,Ãâà...
The Guardian
October 4, 2013
The court documents, unsealed on Wednesday, give the clearest picture yet of the Lavabit case. The documents, filed in the eastern district court of Virginia, are redacted and do not mention Snowden by name. But they do say the target of the FBI is under investigation for violations of the espionage act andÃâà...
New Yorker (blog)
August 9, 2013
In mid-July, Tanya Lokshina, the deputy director for Human Rights Watch's Moscow office, wrote on her Facebook wall that she had received an e-mail from edsnowden@lavabit.com. It requested that she attend a press conference at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport to discuss the N.S.A.Ãâà...
The Guardian
August 8, 2013
Lavabit, an email service that boasted of its security features and claimed 350,000 customers, is no more, apparently after rejecting a court order for cooperation with the US government to participate in surveillance on its customers. It is the first such company known to have shuttered rather than comply withÃâà...
Mashable
December 31, 1999
As pointed out by WIRED in 2015, a federal judge forced Lavabit — once a secure email company that claimed an encryption so great administrators couldn't read emails — to turn encryption keys over to the government in 2014. A similar outcome occurred all the way back in 2007, when Hushmail, whichÃâà...
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