Lavabit

Lavabit was a provider of a web mail service, and a US-based company offering encrypted e- mail services. The service was founded in 2004 by Ladar Levison and set on August 8, 2013 from it as an operator.

Lavabit was founded by programmers from Texas as a response to the service Gmail, due to concerns for privacy existed. The site offered its users the possibility to encrypt their e -mails asymmetrically in a high degree. The service has been described as " probably the currently most secure, private e -mail service " from the weblog Ghacks. In July 2013 Lavabit had 350,000 users and offered free and paid accounts, the potential of storage per user ranged from 128 megabytes to 8 gigabytes.

Lavabit became known in the media, it became known that the whistleblower Edward Snowden used the service to communicate with the lawyers of Human Rights Watch and activists when he was at the Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow.

Claims by U.S. authorities

On August 8, 2013 Lavabit was closed and the site has been replaced by a message that the operator could not explain why he had stopped the service. He raising funds to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit - a federal appeals court - for his constitutional legal rights to fight. After Edward Snowden, the trigger of the surveillance and espionage affair had in 2013, used the service to give an interview during his stay in the transit area of the Moscow airport, the FBI obtained a search warrant and the surrender of all SSL keys, thereby gaining access to all would have been possible on Lavabit executed communication. The company was initially all the key as an expression in miniature font (font size detail 4), the court ordered but then a delivery in a usable shape. In case of violation a penalty of $ 5,000 per day was threatened. Lavabit presented alerted the operation.

At the same time warned Levison before entrusting personal data to any business with a physical presence in the United States. He also has prompted legal action to fight for the reopening of Lavabit. The service had assured its users the encrypted storage of mail on its servers and access to the user data exclusively via their password. By closing Lavabit falls off a major international provider of secure e -mail mailboxes.

Willingness to cooperate with the FBI

From the court documents of Lavabit was announced that Ladar Levison not fundamentally facing a cooperation with the FBI negative. For a payment of $ 2,000, he wanted to write a program for reading data, and for an additional 1,500 U.S. dollars forward this in the next three months to the FBI in order to not get a National Security Letter.

However, the FBI did not go to the kindness of Ladar Levison ultimately far enough, because they demanded an open publishing of metadata, passwords, e- mail content and SSL keys without a warrant in real time. With "real time ," said the FBI a direct network access to Lavabit to even tap all data without Levisons intervention can.

Interview

For the first time spoken publicly about what happened to him in recent weeks, has Levison on August 13 with the non-commercial broadcasting Democracy Now.

Temporary access to email archives for Lavabit customers in October 2013

From 15 to October 17, 2013 was the announced as a limited ability to change their old user password for Lavabit users. As of Friday, 18 October could be accessed with this new password for a period of a few days on their own mail archive at Lavabit to download it and secure it. For this, a website has been published with a new SSL certificate that allowed the safe establishment of the new password and then secure downloading the data. This page is currently unreachable.

Alternatives to Lavabit

According to the warning of Ladar Levison offer providers of encrypted e -mail services, the server, etc. are not in the U.S. and are therefore not exposed to direct pressure from American authorities, possible alternatives.

Instead of a secure e- mail provider to offer email encryption software and anonymous e -mail services such as disposable addresses as alternatives.