Remember that Levinson was not just a private contractor looking for work; taking time to build a whole new wiretapping system into his product wouldn't just co

Remember that Levinson was not just a private contractor looking for work; taking time to build a whole new wiretapping system into his product wouldn't just cost him development time, but it's an opportunity cost as well, since he could have spent that time otherwise developing his business. As for the triviality of implementing a metadata tap, I don't think the FBI was looking just for Snowden's IP address and browser. IIRC, they wanted metadata from his communications: email titles, recipient email addresses, time of transmission, etc. Lavabit was designed in a way that this was impossible. Levinson would have had to implement a system that flagged particular users and then saved metadata before encryption. In a production, business environment, this isn't just a one-liner. Especially given the security-focused nature of Lavabit, the required development time and effort makes $3500 appropriate for the task.