If you listen to the talk he had flown to the court with a limited amount of equipment and he addresses the issue of "readability" in the Q&A section I linked. You didn't listen because he says himself he had 3 hours inside court proceedings to provide it.

I'm not just going to transcribe a video for you. I've provided the source. I've spent enough time on this.

He states that only lawyers are allowed to bring encrypted devices into federal courthouses. This is false. Likely he refers to the fact that you have to check electronic devices like cellphones at the security desk.

Here's what the appeals court had to say about his production of the keys:

> Despite the unequivocal language of the August 1 Order, Lavabit dallied and did not comply. Just before the 5:00 pm August 2 deadline, for instance, Levison provided the FBI with an 11-page printout containing largely illegible characters in 4-point type, which he represented to be Lavabit’s encryption keys. The Government instructed Lavabit to provide the keys in an industry-standard electronic format by the morning of August 5. Lavabit did not respond.

> The Government sought penalties of $5,000 a day until Lavabit provided the encryption keys to the Government. The district court granted the motion for sanctions that day. Two days later, Levison provided the keys to the Government. By that time, six weeks of data regarding the target had been lost.

http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/134625.P.pdf

If you know you might be forced to provide something, and you make it really hard for yourself to get that information in response, judges in the US legal system may well lack sympathy for you.

I'm not seeking to make a value judgement about right and wrong here, I'm trying to argue that Levison's issues stemmed from deliberately choosing to do legally dumb things.