> I'm sure the NSA is capable of wording their employee contracts in such a way that they would have a legal right to snoop on the communications of those in th

> I'm sure the NSA is capable of wording their employee contracts in such a way that they would have a legal right to snoop on the communications of those in their employ. If it were that simple then the NSA would simply have provided that documentation to Levison, no? Or, as I already said, simply scooped up his data going to/from Lavabit's servers anyways, if they felt they had the legal authority. > Regular employers do this with impunity, for sure the NSA can do likewise. Regular employers do this on their own systems, sure, just like every U.S. government IT system warns about the various (but not total) authorities they have to monitor your usage of government computers in many settings. But do regular employers subpoena a third-party email provider under the same IT use agreement expecting that email information to be turned over? > You have to be aware of the use of the service first The USG was obviously aware, otherwise they wouldn't have issued a specific subpoena to the operator of the Lavabit email service. > people a lot smarter than me suspect that that key was so important was in order to be able to decrypt past communications using the same service on captured traffic. Then maybe Levison should have complied with the first batch of specific warrants, where the topic of the SSL key didn't come up at all? I mean, I can also give a self-deprecating comment but I don't think anyone has to be very smart to figure out that the SSL key wasn't even asked for until Levison made it impossible for the USG to perform their "good old fashioned police work" in any other way.