Now I don't know what Lavabit was doing with its e-mail service nor do I know what kind of person Ladar Levison is but one thing I do know is that very few people would actually destroy their own business to protect the privacy of their customers.
In the past 10 years I can think of several instances in which evidence was either hidden or destroyed and every time, it was done to protect the guilty not the innocent.
The truly ironic thing about this is that Ladar Levison is being heralded as a hero for protecting the privacy of his customers from the NSA while Edward Snowden is a traitor for publicizing that the NSA is invading the privacy of American citizens. And those two opposing opinions come from the same people.
Verbalise this paradox when you hear it.