&gt; To me, his mistake was in attempting to provide government-proof email without taking the time to build the expertise required to do so.<p>It is very hard to find someone who knows what he does not know. <i>Much</i> more capable people than Levinson have been bitten by that particular failure.<p>&gt; There (are) experts trying to deliver the same systems, but securely; they get drowned out because their UX isn&#x27;t as smooth as that of Lavabit&#x27;s --- which took full advantage of the UX benefits of total insecurity to get more users.<p>Agreed. Conclusion: user experience counts. What I wonder is why those experts in crypto can&#x27;t get their act together and deliver a user experience that&#x27;s at least good enough not to get in the way of acceptance. Wherever there is a conflict between &#x27;good crypto&#x27; and &#x27;user experience&#x27; the crypto wins out in one product and the user experience wins out in another. Users <i>overwhelmingly</i> choose the packages with the good user experience and the bad crypto.<p>This may not be fixable in the case of conflicts but for many of the issues they may in fact be simply a matter of attention to detail, after all if the effort can be expended to make good crypto then a similar effort should go into the user experience since in the eyes of the users <i>both</i> are important. Delivering great crypto in an impractical package is a non-contribution.<p>That is going to be an uphill battle if the past is anything to go by.