Post Gag Order, Lavabit Founder Reveals Non-Secret That Feds Were After Ed Snowden's Emails

Free Speech

from the the-least-surprising-news-ever dept

Want some unsurprising news? Apparently a three year gag order has just lapsed, allowing Ladar Levison, the founder and former operator of Lavabit, the secure email service Ed Snowden famously used, to finally say that yes, the feds asked him to turn over his encryption key in order to access Ed Snowden’s emails.

Lavabit founder Ladar Levison can finally confirm that Edward Snowden was the target of the 2013 investigation, which led to the shutdown of the Lavabit email service. The original case concerned law enforcement?s authority to compel the disclosure of an SSL/TLS private key, which belonged to Lavabit, and was used to protect the communications of all 410,000 customers, when only one of those customers was the subject of a criminal investigation. After three years, and five separate attempts, the federal judge overseeing the case has granted Mr. Levison permission to speak freely about investigation. The recently delivered court decision unseals the vast majority of the court filings, and releases Mr. Levison from the gag order, which has limited his ability to discuss the proceedings until now.

Mr. Levison has consistently relied on the First Amendment in his court filings, which sought to remove the gag orders entered against him. He argued that such orders are an unconstitutional restraint against speech, and an afront to the democratic process. He plans to use his newfound freedom to discuss the case during a planned presentation on Compelled Decryption at DEF CON 24 in Las Vegas, NV.

Of course, the fact that the feds were after Snowden isn’t exactly news. First off, it’s what everyone assumed the second the site shut itself down. But, more importantly, earlier this year, a redaction failure revealed it directly:

Still, it’s good that the gag order has finally been lifted, and it’s great that Levison is now going to talk about these issues more widely. He also notes plans to create a legal defense foundation to help with similar cases:

In order to continue the fight, Mr. Levison is forming the Lavabit Legal Defense Foundation (or ?LavaLegal?), a non-profit organization founded to, among other things, protect service providers from becoming complicit in unconstitutional activities, and fight secret attempts aimed circumventing digital privacy or impinging upon the right of those involved to speak of the experience. The foundation will be funded by donations from people and organizations all over the world that want to help protect digital privacy and bolster our collective defense against government overreach.

Filed Under: doj, ed snowden, encryption, first amendment, gag order, keys, ladar levison, service providers
Companies: lavabit