14 DAY TRIAL // Ever since Lavabit’s owner revealed it was closing down the service, it was assumed the US government had something to do with all of it, especially since this was the email service used by Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower.
New documents indicate that as soon as Snowden revealed himself as the source behind the leaks, the US authorities issued a demand to Lavabit. The demand was issued under an amendment that allows law enforcement personnel to access non-content Internet records without demonstrating the ‘probable cause” needed for a search warrant, as Wired reports.
That means all information from the “To” and “From” lines of an email, as well as the IP addresses used to access the account.
A few days later, on June 28, a new “pen register order” was issued, asking for metadata for every new email sent or received.
It doesn’t seem as if Lavabit’s founder provided the government with any of this information, as a following document from July 9 indicates the court was asked to enforce a demand that hasn’t been complied with to the government’s satisfaction.
This new information was revealed in a government filing in Lavabit’s appeal in the case. It also shows that the government harassment on Lavabit started some two months before Ledar Levison, the service’s owner shut down the service, on August 8.
“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations,” Levison wrote at the time on the company’s site.
Both Levison and his lawyer have been given a gag order which prevented either of them from divulging information regarding the case, which obviously sparked a lot of theories, most of which are proving to be true.