Silent Circle Follows Lavabit By Closing Encrypted E-mail Service 470
Okian Warrior writes "Silent Circle shuttered its encrypted e-mail service on Thursday, in an apparent attempt to avoid government scrutiny that may threaten its customers' privacy. The company announced that it could 'see the writing on the wall' and decided it would be best to shut down its Silent Mail feature. 'We’ve been debating this for weeks, and had changes planned starting next Monday. We’d considered phasing the service out, continuing service for existing customers, and a variety of other things up until today. It is always better to be safe than sorry, and with your safety we decided that the worst decision is always no decision.' The company said it was inspired by the closure earlier Thursday of Lavabit, another encrypted e-mail service provider that alluded to a possible national security investigation."
Does anyone have replacement recommendations for people who used these services?
Nicely done (Score:5, Insightful)
enigmail/pgp/gpg (Score:4, Insightful)
Encryption should be end-to-end. How can you trust someone else to do it for you?
Re:Weird! (Score:5, Insightful)
The same thing the Fourth Amendment is for. Keeping out people who have no business reading your mail.
Re:Weird! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Weird! (Score:5, Insightful)
The customers of the company I work for do not like it when their blueprints are publicly available. Would you like to have your code and documentation searched by gmail to show ads? (What information do these ads leak to the company that pays for it?)
And any "alien" Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo or Google cloud data is up for collection by the NSA. Sounds like a good reason to encrypt at least some of your mail.
Re:Simple option(s)... (Score:2, Insightful)
There is one flaw...they may not know what the message says, but they can still tell WHO you are emailing
Re:Weird! (Score:5, Insightful)
So i guess, you didn't use envelopes for your mail before email?
Why use clothes even? What do you have to hide?
Why whisper?
That's right... it's called privacy.
NSL order to not reveal NSLs (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think Silent Circle would commit an effective suicide just preventively. Lavabit, while technically not saying a word about NSLs, told us very clearly what the request was. If the government criminals are not idiots, they learned and worded the Silent Circle order in a way that prevented such disclosure.
Re:NSA or Chinese great firewall (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nicely done (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Suddenly, all commucation is "foreign".
3. All communications are now collectible without any oversight.
Re:Weird! (Score:3, Insightful)
So what'd be "encrypted email" for?
It's like the envelope in snail mail. You put your mail in an envelope to protect it until it arrives at its destination, don't you? Encryption accomplishes the same thing for e-mail.
Hype or Reallity? (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, playing devil's advocate here.
LavaBit shuts down "citing" pressure they have received from gov't agencies. No evidence is provided to indicate that reason behind the shutdown...just they guy's word.
Given how everybody is rallying against the gov't at this time - could this actually just be an action of protest rather than a true, official, take-down? Everybody will just assume that the gov't forced the take down "just because". Who would be the wiser? Right? Makes their point, right?
Now, we have Silent Circle shutting down because they "see the writing on the wall". What writing, is that, exactly? Certainly, if they (or LavaBit) have a take down notice but can't share it to confirm the take down...we really don't have proof of their motivations do we? So, trusting souls that we are, we have to assume their motivations are real and not hype for political or protest purposes.
Just say'n.
Re:Distributed Mail (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue that Silent Circle points out is that SMTP is inherently unable to provide security against traffic analysis. Even if the body of the email is encrypted, the headers cannot be.
So yes, you can run your own email server, and require that only gpg traffic pass through it. But that won't keep you secure against traffic analysis (aka "metadata collection") with collection performed at your ISP.
Re:NSA or Chinese great firewall (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Were they contacted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Their statement about closing the service specifically said they hadn't been contacted so if they have been contacted then they didn't just make an ommission it would have been an outright lie.
Because Lavabit has been officially contacted they can't destroy any data, they can shutup shop to prevent anyone else falling into the net which is what they have done but for anyone who have already used the service and have any data already on the Lavabit servers, it's just a matter of time before their data is decrypted one way or another..
I suspect that Silent Circle are shutting up shop before any warrents arrives, that means that it's completely legal for them to destroy any and all data they have. I wouldn't be surprised if the data is already wiped at a software level and the hardware destruction is either in progress or getting planned.
Re:What the heck is going on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple option(s)... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, we could all go back to writing letters. Oddly enough, that still has more legal protections behind it than any other form of communication.
The entire point of all these [not necessarily so recent] revelations is that legal protections are no protection.
Re:Nicely done (Score:4, Insightful)
You think if Obama lost and Romney won there'd be any difference except for figurehead with false polite smile instead of one playing down to earth guy? How cute.
PS: Not an American, just find it silly how y'all go about this as if it was partisan issue and difference between R and D wasn't only what kind of lube they'll use when fucking you in the ass.
Re:Nicely done (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad thing is that I now remember fondly when Obama was compared to Carter. Now it's more like he's channelling Nixon.
Re:NSA or Chinese great firewall (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely the Streisand effect would have already happened - some percentage of people (especially Slashdot readers) would have read that and immediately searched for "pressure cooker backpacks" - and we'd hear about hundreds/thousands of people suddenly gone missing or being detained for questioning.
I mean come on, there's legit concern, there's paranoia, and there's all out tin-foil-nutjob behavior with layered conspiracies hiding deeper multi-level conspiracies. The story about the employer reporting his employee for searching at work sounds 100% legit. Employer is probably engaging the CYA, something corporations have no problem throwing puppies under the bus to do.
Re:Nicely done (Score:3, Insightful)
Obamma is better than Bush:
no he's not
most of Obamma's policies have been well meaning
no they haven't
and he can give a speech without looking like a complete moron.
no...he can't
If you have nothing to hide ... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Freedom is Slavery. The government is here to help.
It sounds like we're trending towards not being allowed to encrypt our own stuff because that automatically means we're doing something shady. There's all sorts of reasons I might want to encrypt information that have nothing at all to do with American national security.
Hopefully some non-American company will step up to the plate and give us this, and we can send a big "Fuck You" to the NSA that says we'll encrypt if we want to, and you can eat shit. My rights aren't defined by your security interests.
Sorry, but the rest of the world doesn't give a crap about what you want, and want to retain our privacy without having to cede it to the US government.
Thanks America, you've now essentially broken the internet, and are only going to make computing less secure for all of us. Welcome to the new world, where industry and government demands full control over technology in order to enforce their will on us.
Re:Nicely done (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as I know Nixon didn't personally spy on anyone and there is no evidence that Obama is personally spying on anyone either. It's the government (and party in at least Nixon's case) doing the spying and they have been doing it as long as it has been technically possible. Civil war they tapped telegraph lines, prohibition the Supreme Court ruled that tapping phones didn't violate the 4th amendment as long as they didn't break into anyones house to tap their phone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmstead_v._United_States [wikipedia.org]. Under J Edgar Hoover the FBI spied on everyone they could and now with modern tech...
Obama is a massive disappointment but to act like he started the spying is wrong.
Re:Weird! (Score:5, Insightful)
Who gives a damn?
I see no reason to defend the situations in which I could choose to encrypt something. I am not going to open my stuff up to you so that I can prove I'm not a terrorist unless you have something to suggest that I am. That's not how it works in a free society.
This "we'll assume everyone is guilty and ignore the ones we don't care about" mentality is crap, and in complete opposition to privacy, freedom, and everything else the US claims to hold so dear.
It doesn't matter if I'm discussing something I'd like to patent, my financial statements, my medical condition, having an affair, or planning to BASE jump off a building -- it's none of the governments business, and without evidence to suggest I'm doing something they need to be concerned about, they can fuck off.
This is just an undue control over your citizens, and sadly, everyone else on the planet since these guys are tapping pretty much everything.
That more an more people might choose to encrypt on general principles is something the NSA is just going to have to learn to deal with -- because I see no point in helping them any more than I can avoid.
America is rapidly becoming some of the same things they used to criticize the Soviets for. And that is sad.
Re:Nicely done (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course he's better than Bush. Failure to end all of Bush's policies doesn't make him worse, or even as bad, as Bush.
"Failure to end" is a euphemism if I ever saw one. To fail, you first need to try. It's more like "embrace and extend". Yes, Bush is responsible for starting a lot of the crap that was escalated out of control under Obama's supervision. And Obama's election promises were quite explicit about reining them in instead.
What did the NSA have on him in order to turn him? Or did they brainwash him? Or what else is in it for him?
Re:Nicely done (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nicely done (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. For things to have gotten this bad, there's an awful lot of blame to go around. For example, the judicial branch isn't any better here either.
Re:Nicely done (Score:3, Insightful)
... and gets a pass because he is a (D) and the press is (D) and not (R).
We have no fifth estate any longer. The MSM press is NOT an ally of the public interest. Not when they realized they could influence politics to their own benefit.
The real scandal in America is the Press. Obama is getting away with things the press would soundly criticize(rightly so) GWB on.
Re:Nicely done (Score:4, Insightful)
Real Americans aren't paying attention to R vs. D since many years ago. If you believe the consciousness of the majority of the American people align with what you see on your television from the U.S., you're just as ignorant.
Schneirer had a great point today (Score:4, Insightful)
Last para:
"When the small companies can no longer operate, it's another step in the consolidation of the surveillance society."
Game. Set. Match.
Re:Nicely done (Score:5, Insightful)
Godwin's law is correctly invoked in a context where comparing a person/action/entity/whatever to Hitler or Nazis is hyperbolic -- it's sort of an insult to those millions who died in the holocaust when someone calls their boss a Hitler because they have to go into work early.
But, when the comparison starts to fit, Godwin's law doesn't apply, precisely because the comparison fits.
So for example, the Nazis focused on a religious/ethnic group and killed millions of them by factory methods.
Americans focus on a particular religious/ethnic group, and kill millions by war, drone strike, and the most devastating weapon of all, economic and trade sanctions.
So the question is, is the way the US is systematically destroying a racial/ethnic group different enough from that the Nazis used, such that Godwin's law may be validly invoked. If not, that's sort of "holy fuck" territory, a place that is very hard to go to intellectually -- so if your knee jerk reply is that Godwin's does apply you should examine that closely because it is really hard to tell yourself, that you're an evil cretin and so much easier to go with the kneejerk.
Re:Nicely done (Score:5, Insightful)
You haven't been watching long. The Republicans enact the abusive legislation. The Democrats howl about it. Then, when the Democrats are in power, they start using the new powers abusively. (Sometimes the Republicans howl about this, but they're more likely to complain when the government does something that helps people who aren't wealthy.)