"Court records show that, in June, Lavabit complied with a routine search warrant targeting a child pornography suspect in a federal case in Maryland. That suggests that Levison isn’t a privacy absolutist. Whatever compelled him to shut down now must have been exceptional."
Wow. Now I'm even more interested at what the NSL/court order was looking for here.
I will put dollars to donuts they were after Snowden's contact list. They want to know about his deadman's switch, who holds the keys, and who they have to squeeze to defuse that particular landline.
They're not asking for any particular information that lavabit has now. If they were, shutting down wouldn't be a solution to not handing it over. They are asking for additional access going forward.
I know, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that Snowden may be in contact with people that his pursuers are not yet aware of. Tapping his communications would give them a much larger attack surface.
But that additional access would probably include various keys that would let them decrypt previous communication. Maybe the order was to log passwords on login, or something like that, that would allow recovery of the key and decryption of stored data, which may not be possible depending on the original architecture of the system.
Their shutdown letter talks about the ordeal of the "last 6 weeks", so it definitely has to do with the US Govt trying to force them to change their system to allow them access to emails because of Snowden. The way Microsoft put a back door into the new Outlook.
Probably secret keys for all the users, along with TLS secret keys, user records, etc. Nothing extraordinary for the US government to demand; what is extraordinary is for a service provider to shut down because of it.
Most privacy advocates I've seen don't like child pornographers either, they just don't subscribe to the idea that people's privacy should be infringed (even if that means it's easier for child pornographers to communicate).
So I don't see why he would do 1). Perhaps 2), but then you would think the same would apply here, unless the NSL/court order is demanding a wiretap to be installed for the future.
Wow. Now I'm even more interested at what the NSL/court order was looking for here.