Silent Circle (secure email) follows Lavabit to the Cemetary

[drmike]

Silent Circle, the security company started by PGP creator Phil Zimmermann has decided to follow Lavabit and discontinue its secure email offering.  They deemed that mail is impossible by its nature to truly end-to-end secure.

http://silentcircle.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/to-our-customers/

 

[jarland]

Mail for mass use is pretty much impossible to secure, but I'm a little torn here. On one hand, good for sending a message. On the other hand, should've waited until it was in protest of an actual unconstitutional request or move against them. Inevitable defeat on a single matter is no reason to throw in the towel. There are casualties of war.

 

[MannDude]

I understand that they're sticking it to the man, or whatever, but did that message come with any notice? I did not see one.

Nothing like, "Due to our beliefs we will follow suit with LavaBit. Please make arrangements within the next 48hours as all services will be rendered useless in that time." or anything like that.

I can't blame LavaBit for not warning their customers first, but seems like SilentCircle could have given their customers/users some time to get what they needed before shutting down?

I just can't think how much of a PITA it would be to get set-back-up if I used either service frequently. Imagine people using double-auth, for example, and getting a keyphrase sent via email to an email that doesn't exist? That'd surely suck.