Edward Snowden’s E-Mail Provider Defied FBI Demands to Turn Over Crypto Keys, Documents Show
● New evidence reveals FBI demands companies secretly turn over crypto keys, allowing them to simultaneously wiretap all customers worldwide, and threatens to jail them if they violate the gag order. The U.S. government in July obtained a search warrant demanding that Edward Snowden’s e-mail provider, Lavabit, turn over the private SSL keys that protected all web traffic to the site, according to to newly unsealed documents. The July 16 order came after Texas-based Lavabit refused to circumvent its own security systems to comply with earlier orders intended to monitor a particular Lavabit user’s metadata, defined as “information about each communication sent or received by the account, including the date and time of the communication, the method of communication, and the source and destination of the communication.” The name of the target is redacted from the unsealed records, but the offenses under investigation are listed as violations of the Espionage Act and theft of government property — the exact charges that have been filed against NSA whistleblower Snowden in the same Virginia court.
ArsTechnica: Lavabit got order for Snowden’s login info, then gov’t demanded site’s SSL key
Russia Today: Snowden’s email service Lavabit consistently denied US govt access despite intimidation