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back to article Silent Circle adds private email to hush-hush communications

Silent Circle, the private communications venture set up by the founders of PGP and two former US Navy SEALs, has added encrypted emails to its protected text and voice services. Silent Circle email Keeping comms quiet As expected, the new email application uses custom code developed by Phil Zimmermann, Jon Callas, and …

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  1. solidsoup
    Black Helicopters

    Odd

    Why would a company like Silent Circle openly advertise government interest, especially going along with it? Here is what it sounds like to me: "Hello, governments of the world. Singapore government has already bought in. You should too, lest you be left out from our data stream. Imagine how hard be brute-forcing that encryption would be."

    Paranoid? Moi?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Odd

      Why would a company like Silent Circle openly advertise government interest, especially going along with it? Here is what it sounds like to me: "Hello, governments of the world. Singapore government has already bought in. You should too, lest you be left out from our data stream. Imagine how hard be brute-forcing that encryption would be."

      I don't even believe the Singapore story. *ESPECIALLY* if Singapore allegedly want to establish themselves as the cyberhub of the world, any entanglement with the US destroys the trust in such a proposition immediately. You don't need to evaluate the technology for that, all you need is track record and a good read of the laws in place.

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      1. JaitcH
        Reply Icon
        WTF?

        @ACRe: Odd

        LEE, Kwan-Yews little paradise on the southern end of the Malay peninsula has ALWAYS monitored communications.

        It even scanned all domestic computers a few years ago to check on legal/pirated software. Furthermore, all residential InterNet connections are monitored and URL restrictions are in place. VietNam, Cambodia and Laos are more free than SP.

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  2. Big-nosed Pengie

    Is it open source?

    If not, I wouldn't trust it as far as I could throw it.

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    1. Velv
      Reply Icon
      Go

      Re: Is it open source?

      I don't entirely agree - it's about layers of security.

      Security by obscurity alone is no protection - totally agree! But adding a closed source security layer on top of standards based open source layers does add some additional protection - the more layers you've got, the more difficult it is to crack.

      How many locks have you got on your front door? I bet there's a keyhole on the outside, but you've probably also got a chain or bolts (multipoint) on the inside that can't be seen from the outside. Would you argue this door is less secure than just a visible lock? I bet you still deploy the additional bolts, because its more secure.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't believe a single word of this - now even less

    From my discussions with various people in intelligence, US resources are considered a plague rather than a cure: their help comes at a very high price, and sometimes the price is not even known until later. There is nobody at government level who can afford to trust the US, and even if they did, it would be idiotic to talk about it or let anyone else talk about it for political and intelligence reasons. The US has a nasty habit of fully ignoring sovereignty when its government officials or agencies want something, and they are not shy of blackmail.

    It is not where the data lives that matters, it is who has control over it. If that is a US organisation, the whole thing is merely a bad joke. If you need any more facts, just work out revenue agains the costs of doing this right. This service is sold below cost, which suggests something else is going on.

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  4. JaitcH
    FAIL

    Mad MAY'S Knickers in a twist

    That crazy woman running the UK Home Office (we can't catch illegals) is still drooling over the prospect of buying BILLIONS of Pounds of hardware so GCHQ can monitor all comunications touching the UK.

    Such a waste of money since Silent Circle defeats the whole process.

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    1. Tom Chiverton 1
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: Mad MAY'S Knickers in a twist

      Well, no, because it's a US company, so bound by PATRIOT etc. - no matter where the servers are.

      Remember how HushMail gave out not-really-encrypting versions of it's code to some people after the US asked them to ? That.

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