You are wrong. For one thing, Ladar is the only person at Lavabit with access to the servers or hosting environment. Absolutely no one could access the plain t

You are wrong. For one thing, Ladar is the only person at Lavabit with access to the servers or hosting environment. Absolutely no one could access the plain text version of anything (password or email contents) without the password to an account, because all data for a specific user is encrypted using a key that is stored as an encrypted string in the database, without the account password the key cannot be decrypted. Now, it would be possible for him to have installed software to intercept the password for a specific user when they authenticate, I have no idea if he ever had to do that. I do know that he's obligated by law to comply with court orders, you can't just refuse to cooperate if federal officials give you a warrant, if you don't cooperate they will throw you in jail until you change your mind. Those rules apply to every American company, not just Lavabit.