As another point of intrigue in the slowly unraveling international game of ‘Where’s Snowden?’, the e-mail service Lavabit – the one which Snowden reportedly used to leak NSA documents – has been shut down. Although a lot of blogosphere speculation has pointed fingers to the US government and the NSA, no real evidence exists to back this claim.

Lavabit owner Ladar Levison offered this cryptic reason for the site’s closure:

“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on–the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.”

The letter, notably, doesn’t offer any real indication of who it was, however the following line seriously indicates US involvement:

“This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.”

via GigaOM