> It's a shame the government didn't work with Levison to either allow Levison to add the requested intercept himself (which, yes, would have required Uncle Sam to trust him) or to allow a third-party (or even a third party requested from both sides) to audit the proposed interception code.

They did. See the unsealed orders (http://cryptome.org/2013/10/lavabit-orders.pdf) The original order from 6/10 only compelled the production of a bunch of metadata from a single specific, named account (see page 4 of the PDF).

There was then an order to compel (basically: "We mean it, don't yank our chain") on 6/28 because earlier that day, FBI agents met with him (according to a later motion) and, quote, "Mr Levison told the agents that he would not comply with the pen register order and wanted to speak to an attorney."

After that order was issued, the FBI claims it "made numerous attempts, without success to speak and meet directly with Mr. Levison to discuss the pen register order and his failure to provide [the specific data requested in the original subpoena]."

It wasn't until 7/9, a month after the original order was served, that they then demanded the production of his SSL keys.