"The problem here is Lavabit was specifically designed to disallow lawful intercepts of individuals."
You say that as though that's the only possible explanation for why the service was designed the way it is.
Tarsnap is also - arguably - designed in much the same way. What do you think Colin's response ought to be if the FBI/NSA come to him saying "we think one of your users might be doing $bad_thing, so we want your private keys so we can impersonate you, decrypt anything any of your users have backed up using tarsnap, and undermine the very basis of the business you've built." (note: this is a bit more difficult to execute - they'd need to have some good reason to update the tarsnap software on all end user's machines, since Colin doesn't have the private key my backups are encrypted with…)
You say "it's designed to disallow law enforcement certain abilities", I say "it's designed with best-practice modern digital privacy techniques, and is _entirely_ legal, legitimate, and a perfectly good premise to base a business on - and which the government _doesn't_ have the right to claim is 'unlawful', the same as building doorlocks without government skeleton keys, or banksafes without hidden vulnerabilities that the FBI or NSA know about, is also not 'unlawful'".
If you want to make privacy illegal - take it to the polls and ask the public if they agree. Until then - designing, deploying, and using well engineered systems to protect your privacy is every citizen's right should they choose to use it. Sure " … some lawful intercepts are justified", but that _doesn't_ imply all systems must be designed in a way that lawful intercepts are possible, and it doesn't give the government the right to coerce people not suspected of illegal acts into destroying their businesses and livelihoods just because they " … didn't trust him to act as a spy on their behalf". That's just _so_ wrong. So _very_ wrong.
You say that as though that's the only possible explanation for why the service was designed the way it is.
Tarsnap is also - arguably - designed in much the same way. What do you think Colin's response ought to be if the FBI/NSA come to him saying "we think one of your users might be doing $bad_thing, so we want your private keys so we can impersonate you, decrypt anything any of your users have backed up using tarsnap, and undermine the very basis of the business you've built." (note: this is a bit more difficult to execute - they'd need to have some good reason to update the tarsnap software on all end user's machines, since Colin doesn't have the private key my backups are encrypted with…)
You say "it's designed to disallow law enforcement certain abilities", I say "it's designed with best-practice modern digital privacy techniques, and is _entirely_ legal, legitimate, and a perfectly good premise to base a business on - and which the government _doesn't_ have the right to claim is 'unlawful', the same as building doorlocks without government skeleton keys, or banksafes without hidden vulnerabilities that the FBI or NSA know about, is also not 'unlawful'".
If you want to make privacy illegal - take it to the polls and ask the public if they agree. Until then - designing, deploying, and using well engineered systems to protect your privacy is every citizen's right should they choose to use it. Sure " … some lawful intercepts are justified", but that _doesn't_ imply all systems must be designed in a way that lawful intercepts are possible, and it doesn't give the government the right to coerce people not suspected of illegal acts into destroying their businesses and livelihoods just because they " … didn't trust him to act as a spy on their behalf". That's just _so_ wrong. So _very_ wrong.