Lavabit founder Ladar Levison. Image: Gage Skidmore/Flickr

A federal appeals court has upheld a contempt citation against the founder of the defunct secure e-mail company Lavabit, finding that the weighty internet privacy issues he raised on appeal should have been brought up earlier in the legal process.

The decision disposes of a closely watched privacy case on a technicality, without ruling one way or the other on the substantial issue: whether an internet company can be compelled to turn over the master encryption keys for its entire system to facilitate court-approved surveillance on a single user.

The case began in June, when Texas-based Lavabit was served with a “pen register” order requiring it to give the government a live feed of the email activity on a particular account. The feed would include metadata like the “from” and “to” lines on every message, and the IP addresses used to access the mailbox.

Because pen register orders provide only metadata, they can be obtained without probable cause that the target has committed a crime. But in this case the court filings suggest strongly that the target was indicted NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Lavabit’s most famous user.