Ladar Levison, founder of the encrypted email provider Lavabit, details why he was forced to shut down his company last summer after the U.S. government attempted to seize Edward Snowden’s email information and much more. The FBI was targeting Snowden after he exposed the National Security Agency’s surveillance to the world, but in doing so effectively wanted access to the accounts of 400,000 other Lavabit customers. Levison was barred from discussing the case in detail at the time, saying only that he had refused “to become complicit in crimes against the American people.” Earlier this week, a federal judge unsealed key parts of the record detailing the government’s requests from Lavabit, freeing Levison to talk more openly about what happened. “The government was telling bold-faced lies,” Levison says. “It was impossible to trust them with the access they wanted. The only option was to shut down or to become complicit in what they were seeking — the mass surveillance of my customers.”
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