Reports claim that, the government has threatened the encrypted email service founder for not assisting the U.S government in its quest for more information on Edward Snowden and his use on the secure email.
The founder of Lavabit, Led Levison shut-down his site earlier last week restricting the U.S government to get information on national security whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was reportedly using Lavabit email address edsnowden@lavabit.com to email human rights lawyers and activists .Levison is being reportedly charged for criminal charges, as when enquired about the situation by Michael Isikoff at NBC News, Levinson stated, “I could be arrested for this action”.
Lavabit claims that he was barred by the federal law from elaborating on the order or any of his communications with proscrcuter from the federal government.However, a close source revealed that, James Trump who is a senior litigation counsel in the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., had sent an email to Led’s Lawyer on the Lavabit had shutdown saying, Levison might have violated the court order. This statement is being assumed to be the largest threat to charge Levison with contempt of court.
Lavabit was started in 2004, which was a response to what Lavabits founders described as the privacy violations by Gmail. It is posted on the Lavabit’s official website that, back in the initial days of Lavabit, its founders felt that Gmail was a great service but the privacy of its users was violated due to display of ads realted to keywords in their email.
As a result of which, Few programmers from Texas which had maniacal level of dedication and experience building mission critical systems started a company called as Nerdshack LLC, which later in 2005, was changed to Lavabit.
To the request for comment from NBC on this issue, neither the U.S. Attorney’s Office or James Trump reverted back.