Ladar Levison is the Owner and Operator of Lavabit, LLC, an email service founded in 2004 (and originally named Nerdshack), Lavabit has always been focused on protecting the privacy of its user's communications. Levison created Lavabit because he believes that privacy is a fundamental, inalienable right, and a prerequisite for afunctioning, free and fair democratic society. This led Lavabit to reach, at its peak, over 410,000 users. Then, on August 8, 2013, and in response to a court decision which required Lavabit to surrender its TLS private key, Levison made the bold decision to suspend operations, and refuse to remain silent, and "complicit in crimes against the American people." Since then Levison has been vigorously defending the right to speak freely, and privately on the Internet. As the principal force behind the Dark Mail Initiative, Levison has also been working on a technical solution for the problem of email privacy.