With so many allegations and news stories about American email being vulnerable to the watchful eye of Big Brother, many are starting to flock to other areas for their email. If you’re thinking Europe is the place to go, you may be mistaken.
Last week, a United States federal appellate court unsealed a set of documents pertaining to Lavabit, the e-mail provider of choice for former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The documents show that Lavabit’s founder, Ladar Levison, strongly resisted government pressure that would have resulted in the privacy of all users being compromised as a way to get at Snowden’s e-mail. Levinson went so far as to shutter the company, destroying its servers entirely.
“People using my service trusted me to safeguard their online identities and protect their information,” Levison wrote in a press release last Wednesday. “I simply could not betray that trust.”