abalone : "The problem here is Lavabit was specifically designed to disallow lawful intercepts of individuals ... And this is why the government resorted to thr

abalone : "The problem here is Lavabit was specifically designed to disallow lawful intercepts of individuals ... And this is why the government resorted to threatening to seize the keys and trying to impersonate the service." Some of us reject your implication that the government is always entitled to the comms, regardless of harms imposed on innocent parties. Forcibly seizing the means of impersonating someone online, while preventing that person from revealing the fact, is a step too far. It is an injustice against the person impersonated, and wrongly deprives him of reputational integrity, and wrongly deprives others of the value of the service for which they contracted in good faith. Statements like yours attempt to depict the combination of seizing private keys + gag orders as a minor invasion, acceptable in certain cases. In fact it amounts to removal of the basic human right of communicating privately - and as brian_cloutier points out, removes the whole basis of trust online. If the policy is allowed to continue, it removes the ability of cryptography to give an assurance of the identity of any entity online. It is better for a few criminals to go free, if necessary, to preserve more important values (and the government can probably find evidence by other means in most of those cases anyway, and if not, too bad).