> that was uniquely designed so as the content's literally did not touch their servers
It only touched their servers in encrypted form, never plaintext.
They would have had to wiretap their customer to retrieve content (for example, client side JS monitoring the next time the user accessed their email on the server) since all email was encrypted on the server harddrives and only accessible via the user.
Instead if it wasn't encrypted they could have used a normal search warrant which would have given the police access to the plaintext content immediately.
What was unique about Lavabit is that they never had the ability to decrypt the content without involving the user, since they never had the "private key".
It only touched their servers in encrypted form, never plaintext.
They would have had to wiretap their customer to retrieve content (for example, client side JS monitoring the next time the user accessed their email on the server) since all email was encrypted on the server harddrives and only accessible via the user.
Instead if it wasn't encrypted they could have used a normal search warrant which would have given the police access to the plaintext content immediately.
What was unique about Lavabit is that they never had the ability to decrypt the content without involving the user, since they never had the "private key".