Not many people had the gumption to do what Ladar Levison, founder of the encrypted email service Lavabit did in 2013. He shut down the email service rather than comply with a US federal law request that could compromise his customers’ communications. It was the FBI that had sought access to the email account of 1 of Lavabit’s most prominent users — Edward Snowden. Ladar had possession of his service’s SSL encryption key that could help the government obtain Snowden’s password. At the time of closure, Lavabit reportedly had over 400,000 users.
Now, over the weekend, Ladar announced that he was relaunching Lavabit with a new architecture that fixed the SSL problem & included other privacy-enhancing features such as one that obscured the metadata on emails to prevent government agencies like the FBI from being able to find out with whom Lavabit users communicated with.
Click here to read Ladar’s announcement.
Image Credit: Lavabit
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