G! blog: Mr. Levison, since when exactly is Lavabit offline?

Ladar Levison: What day is today?

March 10.

Since 214 days.

You’re keeping a list?

I’m good at math.

Okay… Back then, how did the Secret Service apporach you?

They knocked on my door, which in and of itself was a little bit unusual because I had worked with the feds in the past, and they had never come to my door. But I built Lavabit with the Feds in mind in the sense that I was comfortable turning over what little information I had. I didn’t keep logs, and at least in the case that’s being debated right now in the courts, I didn’t even have access to the email messages themselves. So, I had very little information of value, and I was completely comfortable turning that over to them.

Why not this time?

The government came and said, “We don’t care what happens to you, we don’t care who’s privacy we violate, we don’t care what the consequences are, you’re an American company, and therefore you’re subject to our rules, and we say you need to do X, Y and Z so that we can listen to your users’ communications. And oh, by the way, we’re not gonna provide any transparency to ensure back to you that we’re following the rules placed upon us by the court.” They said, “Give us your keys, and trust us,” and given everything that had happened, and just in the circumstances surrounding it, it was impossible to believe what they were saying.

Why do the big companies not fight the government, just like you did?

The big companies are going to court and fighting the government, the problem is they’re losing, and they’re losing in secret in ways that the public has no idea what’s going on or how these secret courts are interpreting the constitution. It’s precisely what Mr. Snowden alluded to in his speech, and the difference with me was that when I lost, I didn’t have a board of directors or a pool of shareholders to answer to, I didn’t have hundreds of employees who depended upon me to earn a living, and as a result, I was free to make the decision that I felt was right, and what I felt was right was shutting down the service. I felt like that was the lesser of two evils.

All of this in order to fight terrorism, right?

I think we’re fighting terrorism, I just think it’s one man’s definition of a terrorist, and every man has a different definition. Again, it’s precisely what Snowden said, “Even if you trust the fellow in the White House today, who’s to say that the person who enters the White House tomorrow can also be trusted?

What’s next?

Well, I just moved into a code cottage with some developers, and short of a small battle we’re having with the HOA over three guys living in the same house, we’re building what we hope will be the next generation of email, dmail. Just like email, but with a ‘d’.

Standing for?

At the moment, dark. What we want, what our goal is is to make the NSA say, “Hey, who turned out the lights?” We want to make everyone’s communications go dark.