Email provider tried to protect Edward Snowden from the FBI

Not every tech company out there was willing to bend the rules to appease the US government back then. Today, many companies are unifying to fight the privacy issues, but even before it came to light that this type of action could be acceptable, a tech company tried to protect Edward Snowden. It was his email provider.

The U.S. government in July obtained a search warrant demanding that Edward Snowden’s e-mail provider, Lavabit, turn over the private SSL keys that protected all web traffic to the site, according to to newly unsealed documents.

The July 16 order came after Texas-based Lavabit refused to circumvent its own security systems to comply with earlier orders intended to monitor a particular Lavabit user’s metadata, defined as “information about each communication sent or received by the account, including the date and time of the communication, the method of communication, and the source and destination of the communication.”