First Lavabit, now Silent Circle: Another U.S. secure email service closes to protect users

(Gigaom) - Silent Circle, the provider of a range of secure communications services, has pre-emptively closed its Silent Mail email service in order to stop U.S. authorities from spying on its customers. The closures strongly suggest that secure hosted email services cannot be sited in the U.S. without being compelled to compromise users' privacy if asked to do so by the authorities there.  

Pre-emptive measure

The National Harbor, M.D.-based Silent Circle team said in their blog post that no-one had contacted them in this way, but they could "see the writing on the wall". Silent Circle's remaining services include secure phone, video and text facilities, largely aimed at enterprise mobile users, that can boast full end-to-end encryption. Unless someone has managed to break this encryption -- unlikely albeit not impossible -- these are genuinely secure services that leave no traces for the FBI or NSA to requisition. The authorities can't even go after the encryption keys, because these are stored on the users' devices.

Link:

Kim Dotcom @KimDotcom  
#Mega's open encrypted email service outside of #NSA reach will
change the way people use email forever. You'll see. Coming 2014.

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