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Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

It may be simpler than that. Even if Snowden has walked away from this service, the publicity may have attracted a lot of people the authorities find interesting, including legitimate (whatever that means) persons of interest.

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The political backlash attached to slapping an NSL on "Snowden's email provider" would have looked obvious to a 5-year-old, and any real player worth its salt would have run from Lavabit as soon as it hit the news.

No, this has nothing to do with common criminals and everything to do with Snowden.

Didn't Italy nail a mob boss a few years ago because they were using a common substitution cipher?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_Provenzano

Yup, that's the guy: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/04/mafia_boss_sec...

NSL's come with a gag order. There wouldn't have been any backlash as no one would have known about it.

He shut it down because that was the only way to legally prevent the government from spying on his users.

Good point. While controversial, this is exactly why, too. (Fed's don't want to tip their hand).

Somebody running a service like Lavabit woild be a very motivated individual, civil disobedience was a real risk.

Haven't NSL gag orders been found unconstitutional?

http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/privacy/309277-judge-says-fbi...

I wonder why he didn't challenge it.

Because challenging it from a solitary confinement cell might not sound that appealing.

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