I was assuming that:
a) Lavabit can't access its users' email, so any subpoenas are ineffective at getting at emails stored in their servers.
b) However, the feds would force them to snoop on decrypted data for specific accounts as it is served back to the user. This would only give access to what the user happens to read after the order goes into effect.
c) They received a new order that was a lot more invasive, perhaps to snoop on all plaintext data as it left their servers.
d) They suspended operations before any such snooping could occur.
If all this is true, any other operation can follow the same steps. If the feds ask for too much, we suspend operations immediately, no 7 days. But they wouldn't need to preemptively suspend before the feds come knocking. Is there something wrong with my reasoning? Were you making different assumptions?
Now I dont know if the NSA attempted that with Lavabit, or if Lavabit willfully ignored that demand, etc but the government does have that legal power.
"In the name of the general welfare, to protect the people's security, to achieve full equality and total stability, it is decreed for the duration of the national emergency that:
...
Point Two. All industrial, commercial, manufacturing and business establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth remain in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not quit nor leave nor retire, nor close, sell or transfer their business, under penalty of the nationalization of their establishment and of any and all of their property.
..." [1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
They're nothing alike. Suppose Silent Circle sent an email to all its users announcing that they would destroy the data on the server in 7 days. It's a good bet the government has accounts on most privacy-advocating web services, simply to keep tabs. That gives the government 7 days to try to get a FISA warrant, or if they think they can get away with it, unilaterally issue a NSL.
They would only be able to subpoena a few of the email accounts (or maybe a lot, but certainly not all), but that still breaks the privacy model many people assume given its advertisement as "secure" webmail.
Silent Circle didn't want to take the chance, and your hyperbolic parallel notwithstanding, they had good reason to do what they did.