Silent Circle closes secure email service the day after Lavabit closure

Company claims that it cannot guarantee customer privacy and security due to authorities' web snooping

Another secure email provider has closed its service rather than face the same secret legal battles against US security services that closed rival Lavabit.

The closure of Silent Circle's email service comes a day after Lavabit, the secure email provider of choice for Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who revealed the all-encompassing extent of US and UK authorities' web snooping, decided to close down rather than fight endless battles for privacy on behalf of its customers.

In an open letter to customers, Silent Circle said that although it had not received any subpoenas, warrants or other demands from US authorities, it would close the service down rather than compromise private customer information.

"We designed our phone, video, and text services (Silent Phone, Text and Eyes) to be completely end-to-end secure with all cryptography done on the clients and our exposure to your data to be nil. The reasons are obvious - the less of your information we have, the better it is for you and for us," it said in an open letter to customers.

Securing email, however, is much harder to genuinely secure as there are too many points where data can be leaked, it added:

"Email that uses standard Internet protocols cannot have the same security guarantees that real-time communications has. There are far too many leaks of information and metadata intrinsically in the email protocols themselves. Email as we know it with SMTP, POP3, and IMAP cannot be secure."

It continued: "Yesterday, another secure email provider, Lavabit, shut down their system less they "be complicit in crimes against the American people." We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail. We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now."

Although the company says that it will continue offering communications services that are encrypted, end-to-end, "Silent Mail was a good idea at the time, and that time has passed".