I rather suspect that Snowden's disclosure will, ultimately, have the intended effect of casting baleful light on just how trillions of our tax-dollars have been (secretly) spent on (secret) things approved (sic) by (secret) courts ... in the very-dark tradition of every totalitarian regime that The United States, in its apparently pre-pubescent years, proudly swore to the world that "we are Different from."

Nope ... when people figured out that War is a Racket, the US National Debt Clock is a whirl of numbers ... and, fellas, that money is not being spent on roads, bridges, or even the "fine, well-equipped hospitals" that Ike Eisenhower spoke about but that today's Americans will be bankrupted if they enter ... America cheerfully lifted pages from the playbooks of Stalin, Pol Pot, and Adolf Hitler. All while "sequestering away" ("uhh, we can't afford it anymore, you see ... we's po' folks...") every other possible use of Public Money, and refusing to prosecute any sort of crime related to High Finance.

When I was a kid, a US Dollar was worth 1/32nd of an ounce of 24K gold. Or, so it was commonly believed. Today, the spot-price of that 32nd of an ounce is: $41 and change. Now, I know perfectly well that "you can't eat gold," but I think that it is an indication of just how much all of this really is costing us all. Things that my grandpa took for granted seem oh, so far away.

Yes, it was a good "Racket" while it lasted. As long as the public could be lulled into a sense of "comfortable complacency" with their heads buried neck-deep in the seashore, it was a very good "Racket," literally worth millions of dollars a minute. But I think that it is coming to an end.

I also had a Lavabit mail, but the decision was clearly correct. I hope you guys with GMail and Hotmail accounts realize that they are helping the government to spy on you, even if you have done nothing wrong.

By the way, RT also covered this:

Encrypted email Lavabit used by Snowden shuts down to avoid 'complicity in crimes against Americans'

Another encrypted Internet service shutting down after Lavabit

Someone once told me that in the Soviet Union, you had to turn to American newspapers to read about what was going on in your own country. Now you need Russian newspapers to read about what's going on in America.

As for alternatives, I started using the e-mail provided by my ISP... so the Swedish government spies on me instead (look up "Försvarets Radioanstalt").

Oh, here's another one: Woman sparks police raid with 'pressure cooker' Google search

In the interim, Lavabit users might want to check out StartMail:

https://beta.startmail.com/

It's not up and running yet, but should be a good option once it has officially launched.

This story has broken out into the larger world.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2013/08...nge-attitudes/

I'm just looking for an alternative about my account on lavabit

Me, too
Countermail isn't free…

... and hushmail's past actions do not make them a viable alternative.
http://it.slashdot.org/story/07/11/1...-us-government

MMmm?
Smoke signals? No. Could be windy.
Carrier pigeons? Might get shot down.
Problems...problems...problems!

What about a European swallow?

Laden or unladen?
ooops!
Shouldn't have mentioned laden - the Powers-That-Be might think it's a reference to the late bin of that name.

Ooops. Now this thread is surely going to be closed.

As a result I have dumped gmail ("do no evil", my arse). Now using riseup.net which works quite well.
@brianL Great idea! Are you suggesting they could decrypt my RSA/RSA 2048 GPG encrypted messages? I thought that would take all the computers in the world linked up and working in tandem for 75 years to do that! Is nothing truly safe any more?
jdk

THEY can take over EVERY computer in the world (including all the Raspberry Pis), creating a massive decryptionbot, and have infinite funds because THEY are accountable to no one. Resistance is futile.

Yeah, that's true but it feels sooooooooooo good! :)
jdk