A federal appeals court has affirmed an earlier court ruling holding Lavabit founder Ladar Levison in contempt for refusing to turn over the master encryption keys to Lavabit’s 400,000 users, and at the same time, Ars Technica reports, reforms to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) have stalled in Congress. The Center for Democracy & Technology’s Jim Dempsey said, “It has become clear to us in the course of a year and a half, we’re not going to see comprehensive ECPA reform at this time.” Kashmir Hill reports on the Levison and Andrew “weev” Auernheimer court cases and how, in each case, the important technological questions of Internet security were not decided because of court technicalities. Meanwhile, German-based startup Lavaboom is unveiling a new e-mail encryption service inspired by Lavabit.
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