Secure Email Service Went Back Online for 3 Days

[Atreides]

Lavabit, the encrypted email service, which became popular thanks to Edward Snowden, opened for business once again, to let customers retrieve information. The company’s founder has closed down the service after the FBI demanded he hand over encryption keys for all his customers’ data.
 

Ladar Levison said in a statement that he was temporarily reinstating the email service for 3 days to allow customers to access their data. He could do that after having obtained a new secure SSL key for the website to authenticate his server and encrypt data.

People who used Lavabit’s email service were left without a possibility to access data after the site went down – just like MegaUpload’s users after Dotcom’s service closure. When asked about how the customers felt about the loss of personal information, the site founder admitted he was in the same boat as them, because he had also used his Lavabit email account for a decade and had no other one.

Ladar Levison is currently tied up in a legal battle with the American authorities over the shutdown of his website. Lavabit lawyers filed court documents where they claimed the American authorities’ demands for the encryption keys to his website had breached the 4th amendment of the US Constitution. The latter protects US citizens from unfair searches.

The email service was closed in August, leaving a note saying he had been forced to make a difficult decision. Ladar Levison had a choice between becoming complicit in crimes against the US people and walking away from nearly a decade of hard work by shutting down his business. The website founder chose the latter.

Lavabit had more than 400,000 users at the time of its death. According to court records, the email service had become the target of FBI scrutiny before it was connected to Edward Snowden. The whistleblower sent an email from his Lavabit account to invite media to a press conference in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport which had become his home for long weeks.

The legal fight of the email service has won support from such figures as Ron Paul, an ex congressman and presidential candidate. The service has also managed to raise funds to meet the legal costs of its case.