Yesterday, Lavabit, the nearly decade-old encrypted email service — recently made famous for i
Yesterday, Lavabit, the nearly decade-old encrypted email service — recently made famous for its use by Edward Snowden — announced to users that it was shutting down. The abrupt statement from Lavabit’s owner strongly alluded to a secret legal battle with the government over private user data, which sent shockwaves through the privacy community, ultimately triggering the shut down of Silent Circle, another popular encrypted email service. For privacy advocates, the shutdowns are the latest discomforting reminder of the looming shadow of government surveillance, which has left some to question if the era of private and secure email has all but come to an end. But according to sources in the space, that’s far from the case. While Lavabit and Silent Circle may have shuttered email services, many avenues still remain. One well-known encryption service, Hushmail, confirmed to BuzzFeed, “We have no plans to discontinue the Hushmail service.” Like many in the privacy community, Pete Ashdown, the founder of the independent ISP XMission, sees this as a call to action. “I look at government attempts to control or monitor the internet as a challenge,” he told BuzzFeed. “It keeps my gears turning in directions to stop them.” Will Email Ever Be Secure? -- source link
#lavabit#privacy#security