Snowden leaks: Lavabit secure email chief battles on By Jen Copestake

BBC Click Published duration 31 January 2014

media caption Lavabit founder Ladar Levison tells BBC Click's Jen Copestake his concerns about the future of privacy.

Lavabit, a private email service used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, has been in court appealing against a government order to hand over its encryption keys. Commentators say the case could represent a landmark for internet privacy.

In August 2013 Lavabit's owner, Ladar Levison, suspended the facility after being ordered to turn over information about one of his accounts. The name of the account's owner is unconfirmed but many reports assume it was Snowden's.

image copyright Lavabit image caption Mr Levison announced Lavabit's closure by posting a message enclosed in its logo on the firm's website

Mr Levison refused to hand the data over and met a demand to release the service's encryption keys by handing over an 11 page printout listing the keys' digits in tiny type, in effect making them unusable.

He said turning these keys over to the FBI in a usable form would compromise the security of more than 400,000 account holders, who had believed their communications to be private.

When he was threatened with daily fines until he handed over electronic copies of the keys, he instead shut the service down without warning, and issued a statement on his website saying he would not "become complicit in crimes against the American people".

He is now challenging the government's actions in court and has also joined a group called the Dark Mail Technical Alliance, which aims to develop a new encrypted email protocol.

The BBC's technology TV show Click met Mr Levison at the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia.

image copyright Reuters image caption Mr Levinson feared all his clients' messages would be compromised if the authorities had a copy of his encryption keys

image copyright Getty Images image caption Edward Snowden's NSA leaks appear to have precipitated Lavabit's clash with the authorities

US government lawyers set out their defence of the FBI's actions in court documents released at the end of last year. Their central argument was as follows:

Just as a business cannot prevent the execution of a search warrant by locking its front gate, an electronic communications service provider cannot thwart court-ordered electronic surveillance by refusing to provide necessary information about its systems.

That other information not subject to the warrant was encrypted using the same set of keys is irrelevant; the only user data the court permitted the government to obtain was the data described in the pen/trap [electronic copy of the encryption keys] and the search warrant.

All other data would be filtered electronically, without reaching any human eye.

Lavabit's belief that the orders here compelled a disclosure that was inconsistent with Lavabit's "business model" makes no difference. Marketing a business as "secure" does not give one licence to ignore a District Court of the United States.

You can see more of the interview with Ladar Levison of Lavabit on this weekend's episode of Click.