Civil disobedience in the case of Yahoo means their company shots down ala Lavabit. I'm sure they would rather keep running under poor conditions than shut down.
You misunderstand. The government didn't shut down Lavabit. They (allegedly) ordered them to insert a backdoor. Not doing so could have caused the principles to face personal criminal charges. I love my customers, but I'm probably not going to go to federal prison for them.
Yes I know what happened at Lavabit. And seeing the Google/Yahoo execs going to prison to protect their users was exactly what I had in mind. I'm not saying I expect them to do it, but it would be admirable. We could get into hypotheticals about in which scenarios would this even help... and I admit that in many scenarios it would be futile, but for some scenarios, it would be an option, even though it would come at great cost.
