Ladar Levison, the tech executive who closed his secure email service last month, says the Obama administration has created a surveillance state on a scale that has not been seen since the communist witch hunts of the 1950s.

Levison, founder of Lavabit, is caught in a legal and political battle among the White House, the National Security Agency, fugitive whistle-blower Edward Snowden and the international public targeted by the U.S. government’s spying activities.

“We are entering a time of state-sponsored intrusion into our privacy that we haven’t seen since the McCarthy era. And it’s on a much broader scale,” Levison told The Guardian. His shuttered email service is at the center of a potentially historic legal battle that could determine the reach of privacy rights in the digital age.

Upon closing his service earlier this month, the 32-year-old posted a message saying that staying in business would make him “complicit in crimes against the American people.” Levison is not allowed to talk about the order the government has given him, nor is he permitted to say exactly what he can’t talk about without risking charges of contempt of court.

Truthdig’s editors recently recognized Levison as their Truthdigger of the Week.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.