Phil Zimmermann's New Venture Will Offer Strong Privacy By Subscription 219
New submitter quantic_oscillation7 writes with this excerpt from the Register: "Phil Zimmermann and some of the original PGP team have joined up with former U.S. Navy SEALs to build an encrypted communications platform that should be proof against any surveillance. The company, called Silent Circle, will launch later this year, when $20 a month will buy you encrypted email, text messages, phone calls, and videoconferencing in a package that looks to be strong enough to have the NSA seriously worried. ... While software can handle most of the work, there still needs to be a small backend of servers to handle traffic. The company surveyed the state of privacy laws around the world and found that the top three choices were Switzerland, Iceland, and Canada, so they went for the one within driving distance."
TFA (Score:4, Informative)
Link is http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/14/pgp_seal_encrypted_communications/ [theregister.co.uk] since it wasn't in the summary.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:TFA (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They better not do the mistake of Hushmail... (Score:5, Informative)
Also there's been a bill on the order paper for a few years that would require them to backdoor it, and it looks like the bill is probably going to pass this time.
Re:Canada is a questionable choice (Score:1, Informative)
Are they aware that Canada's intelligence agencies are lately working under less oversight and with more direct partisan political control?
Are they aware that while Canada has some nice privacy laws on paper, the federal & provincial privacy commissioners don't have any actual enforcement powers when the police simply choose not to cooperate?
Re:Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Sweden has few effective laws for private citizens. It's explicitly codified into law that the authorities are allowed to snoop on your communications. It's a bit better than England ( where you can be jailed for not giving police your encryption keys ) , but there's really no good way to defend against a hostile government. If you truly want to avoid government meddling with your communication your best bet is probably hiding in plain sight. I.e, make sure you and your communication appear dull enough that your government can't be bothered to look at it.
Re:They better not do the mistake of Hushmail... (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. It's like none of them get the idea that paranoid users are paranoid, and keeping out 99.99% of all various intruders, but letting in the 0.01% via a mandated backdoor is the same, mentally speaking, as letting in 100% of all various intruders. Having a backdoor means the solution is inherently insecure, and requires trusting someone which, let's be honest, you don't know. ("Dude, it's totally cool. Your files are totally secure, except that because of a recent law, we have to create a master key that unlocks all the files, at once, and yes, if this key were ever compromised / stolen for any reason, all of our users would have their proverbial asses hanging out the window onto oncoming traffic, but yeah, come on, what are the chances that'd ever happen? Why wouldn't you want to use an almost-secure solution?").
Not everyone using these services is a spy, thief, hacker, cracker, mentally ill, or otherwise questionable person trying to hide something. Sometimes they're just people who like the idea of living quiet lives, and would like a secure / protected e-mail service to actually live up to its name. But there are some eccentric people in positions of power which don't like that idea -> they can't sleep at night until they know for sure that there isn't a bogeyman living under your bed!
Re:lesson learned (Score:5, Informative)
My definition of "rent seekers" is people who accumulate wealth while contributing nothing to society.
It's called the Paul Ryan budget.
Greek workers put in as many hours as German workers. They retire no earlier than German workers. When you talk about "living within their means" you aren't talking about the working and middle classes. The ones that didn't "live within their means" were entirely the financial sector and the "1%".
Yes. the "rent seekers" whose income is entirely in capital gains.