The US Government Is Looking For 'Co-Conspirators' Connected To Snowden's Email Accounts

The U.S. government doesn't believe that Edward Snowden acted alone when he downloaded and stole hundreds of thousands of classified NSA documents and took them to Hong Kong.

The Blot Magazine, citing newly-released court documents involving the Dallas-based secure e-mail service Lavabit, reports that the Feds are looking at two email accounts - cincinnatus@lavabit.com and edsnowden@lavabit.com - both reportedly used by Snowden.

The government is interested in "evidence of the identities of the users of the account and co-conspirators and others associated with the account" and "records relating to who created, used or communicated with the account … including records about their identities and whereabouts," according to the warrant served to Lavabit in August.

The warrant states Lavabit "must provide any and all information necessary to decrypt (e-mail) content, including, but not limited to public and private keys and algorithms."

The company complied with that request before shutting down the service.

Snowden reportedly used the cincinnatus@lavabit.com account to set up a 'Crypto Party' in Hawaii in December 2012, which is around the time that he first sent an email to journalist Glenn Greenwald from the same account.

The Crypto Party involved teaching people how to encrypt their hard drives and use the internet anonymously. The event was co-presented with Runa Sandvik, a privacy and security researcher who previously worked on the Tor Project. Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allow users to anonymously share information over public networks.

The 30-year-old American, who currently lives in an undisclosed location in Russia, reportedly accessed 1.7 million NSA documents while working for the NSA as a contractor in Hawaii. The government believes he began downloading documents in the summer of 2012.

In early June 2013, Snowden gave about 200,000 documents to journalists in Hong Kong before identifying himself and going underground. Advised by WikiLeaks, the former CIA technician boarded a flight to Moscow on June 23.

Both Snowden and Greenwald have said that Snowden held more documents than he gave to journalists. It is unclear when he gave up access to that information. Top U.S. officials believe that most of those documents include U.S. military information that has little to do with civil liberties or privacy.