Phil Zimmermann’s post-PGP project: privacy for a price
June 14, 2012 | Source: CNET
Credit: Silent Circle
Phil Zimmermann released PGP for free, but he’s planning to charge about $20 a month for his new Silent Circle encryption service.
Zimmermann’s new company, Silent Circle, plans to release a beta version of an iPhone and Android app in late July that encrypts phone calls and other communications. A final version is scheduled to follow in late September.
Zimmermann is offering a set of services designed from the start to be simple to use: encrypted e-mail, encrypted phone calls, and encrypted instant messaging. (Encrypted SMS text messages are eventually planned too.)
“We’re going after target markets that have a special need for this,” Zimmermann said. “For example, U.S. military serving overseas that wish to speak to their families.”
Law enforcement, which warns that tech advances have made it far more difficult to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, is unlikely to applaud Zimmermann’s new venture. As CNET reported last month, the FBI has drafted a proposed law that would require providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail to alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly by building in backdoors for government surveillance.
The FBI’s proposal would amend a 1994 law, called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) that currently applies only to telecommunications providers, not Web or peer-to-peer VoIP companies. The Federal Communications Commission extended CALEA in 2004 to sweep in broadband networks and VoIP providers such as Vonage (which uses the telephone network) but not Skype-to-Skype calls (which are peer-to-peer).
Depending on the final wording, the legislation could target Silent Circle — meaning that, 21 years after he released PGP, Phil Zimmermann has not lost his knack for vexing the U.S. government.
Comments (4)
by Improbus Liber
This boils down to trust. I trust Phil’s software but I down trust his business partners.
by Christian Gehman
We cannot expect government to applaud any attempt to limit its power to spy on the citizens. Get the drones out of the sky. The government can’t open your mail, but it can snoop on your email. And it can use a laser to read mail that comes via post office. Time to declare all email “mail” and start charging a penny a message.
by Phil Osborn
\ / Last time I checked, that guy in Florida who had copies of Hentai
\ O / cartoon sex, with no actual children involved, is still serving his
* * Federal sentence of 15 to life for kiddie porn. By that standard, the
( o ) stick figure to the left should get me at least five, but then
\ / there’s the free dental and meds to consider. Who are the real
/ \ pervs in this picture? That Florida case exposes the cyberspace
decency act and all the related legislation for its real purpose,
opening another door to real tyranny in the form of thought
control.
Then there is that recent article about a system to ensure
that kids are paying attention in class. Nice. Wonder where that
could take us?
It can’t happen here?
It already has, with around a million U.S. citizens incarcerated for
the crime of putting the wrong drugs in their bodies – in the wrong
state, that is. There is no lack of will to ruin people’s lives on the
part of those who would be our slave masters – for our own good,
even if it kills us. My Workman’s Comp doctor keeps trying to
increase my pain meds that are known to cause side effects such
as intestinal blockage, even as I’m succeeding in tapering
off. But he makes money on every bottle of vicodin, whether I
take it or throw it away – and then he tests my urine on every
visit, even though I have no criminal record at all, just to be sure
that I’m not using something like mariuana that is relatively safe.
You go, Zimmermann! Let’s put some blockades in their path,
even it they’re only temporary. Maybe temporary will be enough
as those exponentials that Ray likes so much start impacting our
general intelligence. I wonder what the exponentials involved
in sociopaths are? Is there a learning curve by which we
normals can learn to recognize real evil more readily or will it
perversly swing the other way, with training feedback systems to
teach sociopaths how to lie more effectively? The sociopaths
have Bastiate’s concentrated interest on their side…
by gaoptimize
I’ll be honest and say it will be difficult to prove that Silent Circle:
1) Isn’t infiltrated
2) Doesn’t recieve and responds to warrantless subpoena’s without notifying customers (under threat of enforcement action)
3) Isn’t “strongly encouraged” to open a back door.
I am at peace in my garden quite a bit these days, where my squash is in bloom and not controversial to anyone yet.