A few weeks ago, encrypted email service Lavabit shocked the internet when it announced that it would be shutting down. The company said it could not disclose the reasons for the decision.
The owner of the company Mr. Ladar Levison explained that he could not go into details, but hinted that the government had sent him a secret order for something he could not disclose .
Since the company offers an encrypted email service, it was ordered to release its users' data to the government. It's the well-known policy followed by the NSA, which simply asks companies to comply with its secret orders and provide whatever data they have.
Lavabit of course couldn't confirm this, for fear of exposing the secret service. So no one could say for sure what happened .
But in light of the latest revelations from Edward Snowden, there is no doubt about what the government asked Lavabit for.
New documents leaked by the Guardian and the New York Times reveal that the NSA has made great strides in breaking or bypassing encryption on the internet. It uses coercion or convincing companies to leave backdoors for its operations.
However, the way Mr. Ladar Levison can teach us a lot, and make us hope. There are still people who place ethics above profit. Mr. Ladar Levison's no was heard neither by Microsoft, nor by Google, nor by Apple. The reason is known, we know it but we still prefer them. It is our well-known insensitivity, soon we will be celebrating the new Windows 8.1 or the new iPhone and the secret services will continue their actions through our new device or our new operating system.
