Despite recently receiving asylum in Russia, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden continues to have little trouble staying in the spotlight. Now, some of the fallout from his revelations has landed squarely on the shoulders of Lavabit, one of the websites he used to communicate some of his information.

Lavabit, a Texas-based encrypted email service that was recently revealed to be the service Snowden used for his top-secret communication, has had to shut down its operations. Perhaps most mysteriously, the website was unable to give specific reasons for why it had to discontinue its services.

"I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot," says a statement posted to Lavabit.com by site owner Ladar Levison.

It would appear that a governmental agency forced Lavabit to discontinue its business, though that is still uncertain at this time. Levison did say that he wished he could exercise his First Amendment right to free speech but was also quick to note that legislation by passed by Congress makes that impossible for him.

Levison also stated that he has already gone through the process of filing for an appeal with the Fourth Circuit Court. If that appeal fails, than Lavabit will most likely have to conform to whatever requests are made of it by the government, or move out of the country.

Edward Snowden used Lavabit to send some of his most private e-mails as he blew the lid off of the NSA's spying program. It appears that Lavabit was unwilling to compromise its reputation as a site that allowed users to conduct safe, spy-free, encrypted messaging. When Snowden heard of Lavabit's problems, he had no problem calling on other companies to follow suit.

"America cannot succeed as a country where individuals like Mr. Levison have to relocate their businesses abroad to be successful. Employees and leaders at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are. The defense they have offered to this point is that they were compelled by laws they do not agree with, but one day of downtime for the coalition of their services could achieve what a hundred Lavabits could not," Snowden said.

So far all of the major players in technology have shown that they will comply with the demands placed on them by the NSA and other governmental agencies. But the United States isn't the only country using intrusive intelligence gathering tactics.

It is now being reported that XKeyscore, a vital component of the NSA's spying program, has been in use by the German foreign intelligence agency BND since at least 2007. XKeyscore has been described as having the "widest-reaching" collection of online data. Using only a person's e-mail address, anyone using XKeyscore can view that person's browsing history and e-mail contents, all without a warrant.

"XKeyScore is an important building block for the fulfillment of the BND, in particular for the reconnaissance of situations in crisis areas, for the protection of German servicemen and women stationed there in the fight against terrorism, and to protect and rescue kidnapped German nationals", said the BND.

With Germany using the same XKeyscore technology for at least the past six years, the true extent of this spying program on the citizens of the world is now coming to light. Snowden has already claimed that he could view such personal information about anyone in the world, and he appears to be vindicated in saying that. The only question left is, do the people who are being spied on care enough to do anything other than tacitly comply?