The email service that was shut down after the FBI demanded access to Edward Snowden's email account is making a comeback:
In 2013, Ladar Levison, founder of the encrypted email service Lavabit, took the defiant step of shutting down the company's service rather than comply with a federal law enforcement request that could compromise its customers' communications. The FBI had sought access to the email account of one of Lavabit's most prominent users — Edward Snowden. [...] Rather than undermine the trust and privacy of his users, Levison ended the company's email service entirely, preventing the feds from getting access to emails stored on his servers. But the company's users lost access to their accounts as well.
[...] On Friday, he's relaunching Lavabit with a new architecture that fixes the SSL problem and includes other privacy-enhancing features as well, such as one that obscures the metadata on emails to prevent government agencies like the NSA and FBI from being able to find out with whom Lavabit users communicate. He's also announcing plans to roll out end-to-end encryption later this year, which would give users an even more secure way to send email. The new service addresses what has become a major fault line between tech companies and the government: the ability to demand backdoor access to customer data.
Previously:
The Story of the Lavabit Shutdown
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @05:12PM
So, how does Levison expect to get around the, "Here's the warrant for this person's account. Next time they log in you WILL serve them this piece of code, courtesy of the NSA. No, we have no legal obligation to tell you what that blob of code does, and if you want to avoid PMITAP you will rearrange your service to serve them that code."
Or the NSA pulls a black bag operation to infect Lavabit's servers to make the same practical effect happen. Because Furriners will be using his service, youbetcha, and NSA won't be able to distinguish the domestic traffic from the foreign without their keyloggers added to the message source system. Therefore they're entitled to take it all and let God (NSA's mainframe) sort it out.
Or, "Here's your NSL. You WILL send a message to all your customers using this new and custom "CustomDropkickCopperplate" font, so that all government (and other compromised) websites will get the IP address and know which IPs use Lavabit service by checking you have that font installed."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @08:32PM
Worst-case scenario: another shutdown.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday January 23 2017, @10:01PM
> How do you get communication privacy in a totalitarian state?
FTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @11:55PM
Thank you. You very neatly summarized my concern.