The founder of Lavabit was perfectly willing to cooperate with the US government, including giving up customers' data, until some point when he just reverted to childish behaviour.
He was forced to consent to having monitoring hardware installed. When the government demanded that he hand over the encryption keys as well he refused. You can read his side of the story here: http://lavabit.com/
I don't see anything childish about upholding his fiduciary responsibilities to his users and standing up to the agents of a surveillance state which far exceeds even the wildest dreams of the East German Stasi.
He handed over specific user data for other users, refused to do that in the Snowden case. Only then (and after long stalling) did the US government demand the keS, in order to get the data themselves.
Had he handed over the requested data, just like all the data before, noone would have demanded any keys.
I don't see anything childish about upholding his fiduciary responsibilities to his users and standing up to the agents of a surveillance state which far exceeds even the wildest dreams of the East German Stasi.