Lavabit's founder: 'If You Knew What I Know About Email, You Might Not Use It'
For those without showdead on, there's an insightful comment from beedogs:My guess (and he intimates this in his comment about backdoors in Chinese products) is that the US government asked him to basically break his entire system so they could do MitM attacks.The conversation probably went something like this:    USG: Install this machine in your datacenter.  Route all traffic through it.  
    Accept installation of this new fiber demarc and allow us access to 
    configure this new router.  You do not need to know where this 
    traffic is going.  If you refuse, we'll slap you with a contempt order 
    and throw you in federal prison.  If you tell anyone about this, we will 
    slap you with a contempt order and throw you in federal prison.
    
    LL: Get fucked.  I'll shut everything down instead.

-----Why beedogs is shadowbanned is beyond me. A quick glance through his comment history doesn't indicate he's done anything to deserve it.----Hey beedogs: I can't reply to you directly because you're hellbanned. Send an email to PG. I'm not usually a fan of posting people's contact information, but in this case it's everywhere anyway - pg [at] ycombinator.com