From: Ulex Europae <europus@gmail.com>
   Secrets, lies and Snowden's email: why I was forced to shut down
   Lavabit
   For the first time, the founder of an encrypted
   email startup that was supposed to insure privacy
   for all reveals how the FBI and the US legal
   system made sure we don't have the right to much privacy in the first
   place
   By Ladar Levison
   May 20 2014
   <[1]http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-did-lavabi
   t-shut-down-snowden-email>
   My legal saga started last summer with a knock at
   the door, behind which stood two federal agents
   ready to to serve me with a court order requiring
   the installation of surveillance equipment on my company's network.
   My company, Lavabit, provided email services to
   410,000 people including Edward Snowden,
   according to news reports and thrived by
   offering features specifically designed to
   protect the privacy and security of its
   customers. I had no choice but to consent to the
   installation of their device, which would hand
   the US government access to all of the messages
   to and from all of my customers as they
   travelled between their email accounts other providers on the Internet.
   But that wasn't enough. The federal agents then
   claimed that their court order required me to
   surrender my company's private encryption keys,
   and I balked. What they said they needed were
   customer passwords which were sent securely
   so that they could access the plain-text versions
   of messages from customers using my company's
   encrypted storage feature. (The government would
   later claim they only made this demand because of my "noncompliance".)
   Bothered by what the agents were saying, I
   informed them that I would first need to read the
   order they had just delivered and then consult
   with an attorney. The feds seemed surprised by my hesitation.
   What ensued was a flurry of legal proceedings
   that would last 38 days, ending not only my
   startup but also destroying, bit by bit, the very
   principle upon which I founded it that we all
   have a right to personal privacy.
   In the first two weeks, I was served legal papers
   a total of seven times and was in contact with
   the FBI every other day. (This was the period a
   prosecutor would later characterize as my "period
   of silence".) It took a week for me to identify
   an attorney who could adequately represent me,
   given the complex technological and legal issues
   involved and we were in contact for less than a
   day when agents served me with a summons ordering
   me to appear in a Virginia courtroom, over 1,000
   miles from my home. Two days later, I was served
   the first subpoena for the encryption keys.
   With such short notice, my first attorney was
   unable to appear alongside me in court. Because
   the whole case was under seal, I couldn't even
   admit to anyone who wasn't an attorney that I
   needed a lawyer, let alone why. In the days
   before my appearance, I would spend hours
   repeating the facts of the case to a dozen
   attorneys, as I sought someone else that was
   qualified to represent me. I also discovered that
   as a third party in a federal criminal
   indictment, I had no right to counsel. After all,
   only my property was in jeopardy not my
   liberty. Finally, I was forced to choose between
   appearing alone or facing a bench warrant for my arrest.
   In Virginia, the government replaced its
   encryption key subpoena with a search warrant and
   a new court date. I retained a small, local law
   firm before I went back to my home state, which
   was then forced to assemble a legal strategy and
   file briefs in just a few short days. The court
   barred them from consulting outside experts about
   either the statutes or the technology involved in
   the case. The court didn't even deliver
   transcripts of my first appearance to my own
   lawyers for two months, and forced them to
   proceed without access to the information they needed.
   Then, a federal judge entered an order of
   contempt against me without even so much as a hearing.
   [snip]
   ------------------
   Jim Bell's stuff below:
   I wonder if Ladar Levison could have done the following:
   1.Written up all documents he had been served with (even if ostensibly
   "secret" ) as "exhibits" in a lawsuit,, perhaps in a State court.
   2. Filed it in a State court.
   2a. He might "serve" it on someone, not a party to any Federal action.
   3. It would be then "Instantly" published in on the Internet, before
   the State court could have entered any sort of "under seal" order for
   those documents.  He would be publishing as-filed State Court filings;
   presumably he would be entitled to do so, even if they were copies of
   other documents.
   Myself, I feel that no court can legitimately have any legal authority
   to order anyone to not speak about a legal proceeding.  It's easy to
   explain why:  The First Amendment, and the well-known prohibition
   against prior restraint, etc.  But the reality is that courts have
   developed the idea that "order" the "sealing" of documents.  I don't
   have an argument with an idea that a court can order an employee of
   government to not speak, precisely because he IS a government employee.
    But Mr. Levison wasn't, and isn't a government employee.
   Would the procedure I described above 'get around' the law?
                Jim Bell

References

   1. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-did-lavabit-shut-down-snowden-email