"The problem here is Lavabit was specifically designed to disallow lawful intercepts of individuals."
This is not True.
Lavabit made it clear in their TOS that they had no interest in concealing illegality, they complied fully and willingly with all warrants targeting individual users.
Their premise was to protect your privacy from untargetted blanket surveillance.
I think the issue some people seem to be missing in this discussion is that the technology is morally neutral.
A system designed to protect the privacy of its users' data even if its operator is subjected to coercion does not care whether the coercion comes in the form of a court order, a bribe, a threat to reveal a secret or a man holding a gun to the operator's head.
A system designed to be secure against coercion of its operator necessarily resists lawful intercepts just as it resists blackmail. Designing a system in such a way does not imply that the designer wishes to promote illegal behavior nor hinder the ability of the police to investigate it.
I can't see any part of that article that supports your claim. On the contrary, the article appears to claim that one of the reasons he was resisting so strongly was that handing over the keys would allow full access, though the reporting isn't very clear when it comes to already stored e-mails.
From the article:
' On July 25th, Lavabit petitioned to cancel the subpoena and warrant, arguing that if the “government gains access to Lavabit’s Master Key, it will have unlimited access to not only [the account], but all of the communications and data stored in each of Lavabit’s 400,000 e-mail accounts.” Lavabit also asked the court to unseal its records and permit Levison to speak. '
My source is (was) the lavabit ToS. I was a paying customer of Lavabit and familiar with their ToS.
He made it pretty clear that if you wanted to use his service to hide illegal activity you were SOL.
The TOS seems to be long gone. But wikipedia summarises his stance on legit warrants as opposed to "hand over your SSL private key": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit
This is not True.
Lavabit made it clear in their TOS that they had no interest in concealing illegality, they complied fully and willingly with all warrants targeting individual users.
Their premise was to protect your privacy from untargetted blanket surveillance.