Silent Circle, an encrypted communications firm focused on mobile security, has discontinued its Silent Mail e-mail encryption service, which was available via its channel partners. It said that it has done so in order to preempt government requests for customer information.
“The decision to end Silent Mail reflects Silent Circle’s unwavering commitment to its subscribers’ privacy and does not affect the company’s revolutionary peer-to-peer encrypted platform for mobile apps and services – Silent Phone, Silent Text and Silent Eyes,” the company said. “These are all completely secure end-to-end services that utilize encryption keys exclusively on users’ devices. Silent Circle does not log any metadata associated with these services and does not have the ability to decipher the contents of calls and messages.”
Ending Silent Mail means Silent Circle is no longer subject to possessing this data and preempts any government authorities’ efforts to obtain information through subpoenas, warrants or security letters – which Silent Circle said that it has not received, to date.
“Silent Mail was a good idea at the time, and that time has past,” said Silent Circle’s CTO, Jon Callas. “We introduced Silent Mail in response to customer demand, stating upfront that – even with encrypted contents – e-mail as we know it today is fundamentally broken from a privacy perspective. With further thought – and before we were served with any demands compounding this issue – we decided it is in our users’ best interests to focus purely on peer-to-peer encrypted phone, text and videoconferencing services because the less information we have on how subscribers use our services, the better it is for everyone.”
He added, “This is an unfortunate example of the chilling effect the current surveillance environment is having on innovative communications companies. While the majority of our government, commercial and consumer subscribers primarily use the unaffected apps that run on our peer-to-peer encrypted architecture – like Silent Phone and Silent Text – we apologize for any inconvenience this decision caused. We want all customers to always know that their privacy is what is most important to us.”
