It's taken longer than first expected, but the first fruits of Lavabit founder Ladar Levison's Dark Mail Technical Alliance have landed with the relaunch of the encrypted mail service he closed in 2013. After shuttering Lavabit, Levison joined hands with Silent Circle to form the DMTA and promised Lavabit would flow again in …

It was Edward Snowden's email account the FBI was targeting in its extraordinary legal case against Lavabit, we can now confirm. Lavabit ran an encrypted email service that Edward Snowden was thought to have used in 2013 to contact journalists about the top-secret NSA files he had in his possession. In documents published …

DefConLavabit founder Ladar Levison will within six months carve out a military-grade email service from the ashes of Ed Snowden's favourite email client. As many of you will remember, Levison killed the service to prevent his clients' information from getting into the clutches of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. The popular …

One of the attractions of presence in communications services is that you know someone's available before you try to contact them. The flipside is that presence is also inimical to privacy. Now, a group of researchers has put forward a way to improve privacy of “buddy lists” but still allowing friends to know each others' …

Ladar Levison, owner of the now-defunct Lavabit email service, could be facing a heavy fine after an appeals court ruled that he failed to properly contest the government's attempts to install taps on his servers. Lavabit was the secure email service picked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as the repository of his personal …

QuoTWThis week saw the return of the big US patent trial that was once a resounding $1bn victory for Apple and is now a long-running, achingly irritating waste of everyone's time. Nevertheless, they continue to spar in courts all over the world, making lawyers rich instead of spending all their money on actual innovation. This week …

Lavabit's founder has claimed other secure webmail providers who threatened to shut themselves down in the wake of the NSA spying revelations had received court orders forcing them to stay up. Ladar Levison made the claim during a recent Reddit AMA (ask-me-anything) Q&A chat without going into details about the alleged strong- …

Former Lavabit proprietor Ladar Levison claims the new Dark Mail initiative he's cooking up with the team from Silent Circle will enable email that's virtually spy-proof, but according to at least one expert, the original Lavabit service was never all that secure to begin with. "After all," security guru Moxie Marlinspike …

Ladar Levison, the former operator of the Lavabit secure email service that was once used by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, has launched a Kickstarter project to raise funds to release the site's code as an open source project. Levison shut down Lavabit in August, and while court orders forbid him from discussing details of the …

Two firms at the sharp end of privacy have joined forces to build an email system that provides end-to-end encryption that will hopefully prove impossible for service providers to eavesdrop and crack – even if forced to do so. "As founding partners of the Dark Mail Alliance, both Silent Circle and Lavabit will work to bring …

VPN service CryptoSeal has followed Lavabit's example and shuttered its consumer service, saying its CryptoSeal Privacy service architecture would make it impossible to comply with a government order without handing over the crypto keys to its entire system. The company, which will continue offering business services, made the …

Lavabit, the secure email service which shut down after pressure from the US government to access customer emails, is back up for a brief window during which users can change passwords and recover lost data. Company founder Ladar Levison posted a brief message claiming that first a 72-hour period starting from 7.00 PM US …

The former operator of a secure email service once used by NSA leaker Edward Snowden has been fined $10,000 for failing to give federal agents access to his customers' accounts, newly released court documents show. In August, Ladar Levison shut down Lavabit, his security-minded email business, rather than comply with …

Blogger Pamela Jones will shut down her award-winning legal news website Groklaw following revelations that the NSA is intercepting the world's internet communications. Jones, also known as PJ, said in a final farewell article that the shutdown of encrypted email provider Lavabit, used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, had …

The owner of an encrypted email service used by NSA leaker Edward Snowden could be facing contempt of court charges after refusing to hand over his users' information to spooks, according to a recent report. Ladar Levison dramatically shut down his email firm, Lavabit, after being whacked with a secret federal court order. …

AnalysisGerman hackers have poured scorn on Deutsche Telekom's plan to offer "secure email", describing it as little more than a marketing gimmick. Deutsche Telekom and partner United Internet are rolling out SSL-encrypted connections between users’ computers and the companies' mail servers as part of the “Email made in Germany” offer …

AnalysisThe sudden closure of two secure email services may cause many privacy-conscious people to begin looking for alternatives. However, security experts warn that any service provider may be put under pressure to comply with authorities, and this might kill off secure mail as we know it. Lavabit's Levison: No more palaver, I'm …

Silent Circle, the company founded by former PGP wonks and Navy Seals and which offers very, very, secure communications, has decided to shutter its Silent Mail email service. The decision, announced in a blog post, comes on the same day that Lavabit, another secure email service, decided to close because it cannot guarantee …