3 ms·

> The surprising takeaway for me is that PGP is so astoundingly crappy to use that even Phil Zimmerman asks people to send him plain text mail. I agree that th

> The surprising takeaway for me is that PGP is so astoundingly crappy to use that even Phil Zimmerman asks people to send him plain text mail. I agree that that was surprising, but I can't take it without a grain of salt: he is the co-founder of a company releasing alternatives to e-mail+PGP for privacy. That's more than a small conflict of interest. I'm also not sure I understand his point regarding email privacy vs. message-app privacy. Either of them could easily be subpoenaed in the U.S., and moving either of those services off-shore should theoretically provide the same protection. Maybe the messages will be stored on Silent Circle servers in an encrypted state...?

StavrosK 13y ago
Silent Circle controls the client for Silent Text, so the messages can be encrypted end-to-end. For email, the same thing isn't true, so messages can be decrypted on the server (otherwise the mail client could never read them). Hence the discrepancy, and the deletion.
- david_shaw 13y ago
  > For email, the same thing isn't true, so messages can be decrypted on the server (otherwise the mail client could never read them). I'm not a crypto guy, so forgive my potential ignorance. Are you saying that because the crypto is being done on a potentially untrusted client (whether a web interface or third-party email client), that the end-to-end encryption could be compromised? I realize that e-mail (by protocol) is sent over plaintext, but if the entire content of the e-mail is PGP encrypted, how is that less secure than actual end-to-end encryption?
  - JshWright 13y ago
    With email, you _can't_ encrypt the headers of message. Who the message is to, who it's from, when it was sent, what the subject line is... All those things need to be accessible to every server that touches the message from creation to delivery. Things get worse when you have to interoperate with mail clients that don't support encryption. Now the best you can do is encrypt the body of the message at rest, but you still have to be able to decrypt it to deliver it. You're absolutely right that _if_ both parties are using PGP in their clients, then the _body_ of the email will be secure, end to end (not the meta data mind you, just the body). However, that requires a lot of manual key management (assuming you use a client that supports it in the first place). That key management nightmare is why no one actually uses PGP...
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    What JshWright said is correct. Specifically for Silent Mail, the mail server is the last thing that can decrypt (because it has to work with plain clients), so it can see your plaintext. With Silent Text, the last thing that can decrypt is the client, so Silent Circle can never see your plaintext. That's what was wrong with it specifically.
autodidakto 13y ago
>That's more than a small conflict of interest. It seems that he refuses to acknowledge the existence of GPG, even when complaining about using PGP on the Mac. GPGTools for the mac is the best PGP email experience between Linux/Win/OSX, yet only Symantec's PGP is considered. I just don't get it. He wanted to close the service before getting a NSL. He couldn't give it a day? He copies off the employee email but dumps his customers' email? (Even the lavabit guy kept the customer email). This crypto hero knows better than to recommend a fake-crypto solution (hushmail) instead of simply saying "don't use email for anything private".
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
jedbrown 13y ago
They did server-side crypto for email, so they had the keys to decrypt. Maybe those keys were locked with users' passwords (like Lavabit), but they couldn't run a functional server without having the plaintext visible to the server at some points. Silent Circle's other services do everything on the client, so it's impossible to backdoor the server. However, that would protect them against the demands that Levison encountered. For example, the secret court may have a broadened interpretation of CALEA [1] that would make Silent Circle's services non-compliant. I'm not a lawyer, but if Silent Circle is classified as a telecommunications provider, then CALEA already requires them to have built it with real-time surveillance capability without tipping off either party involved in the communication. Since their system prevents this by design, I wouldn't be surprised if they get shut down entirely in the short term. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALEA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALEA

StavrosK 13y ago

Silent Circle controls the client for Silent Text, so the messages can be encrypted end-to-end. For email, the same thing isn't true, so messages can be decrypted on the server (otherwise the mail client could never read them). Hence the discrepancy, and the deletion.

david_shaw 13y ago
> For email, the same thing isn't true, so messages can be decrypted on the server (otherwise the mail client could never read them). I'm not a crypto guy, so forgive my potential ignorance. Are you saying that because the crypto is being done on a potentially untrusted client (whether a web interface or third-party email client), that the end-to-end encryption could be compromised? I realize that e-mail (by protocol) is sent over plaintext, but if the entire content of the e-mail is PGP encrypted, how is that less secure than actual end-to-end encryption?
- JshWright 13y ago
  With email, you _can't_ encrypt the headers of message. Who the message is to, who it's from, when it was sent, what the subject line is... All those things need to be accessible to every server that touches the message from creation to delivery. Things get worse when you have to interoperate with mail clients that don't support encryption. Now the best you can do is encrypt the body of the message at rest, but you still have to be able to decrypt it to deliver it. You're absolutely right that _if_ both parties are using PGP in their clients, then the _body_ of the email will be secure, end to end (not the meta data mind you, just the body). However, that requires a lot of manual key management (assuming you use a client that supports it in the first place). That key management nightmare is why no one actually uses PGP...
- StavrosK 13y ago
  What JshWright said is correct. Specifically for Silent Mail, the mail server is the last thing that can decrypt (because it has to work with plain clients), so it can see your plaintext. With Silent Text, the last thing that can decrypt is the client, so Silent Circle can never see your plaintext. That's what was wrong with it specifically.

autodidakto 13y ago

>That's more than a small conflict of interest. It seems that he refuses to acknowledge the existence of GPG, even when complaining about using PGP on the Mac. GPGTools for the mac is the best PGP email experience between Linux/Win/OSX, yet only Symantec's PGP is considered. I just don't get it. He wanted to close the service before getting a NSL. He couldn't give it a day? He copies off the employee email but dumps his customers' email? (Even the lavabit guy kept the customer email). This crypto hero knows better than to recommend a fake-crypto solution (hushmail) instead of simply saying "don't use email for anything private".

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

jedbrown 13y ago

They did server-side crypto for email, so they had the keys to decrypt. Maybe those keys were locked with users' passwords (like Lavabit), but they couldn't run a functional server without having the plaintext visible to the server at some points. Silent Circle's other services do everything on the client, so it's impossible to backdoor the server. However, that would protect them against the demands that Levison encountered. For example, the secret court may have a broadened interpretation of CALEA [1] that would make Silent Circle's services non-compliant. I'm not a lawyer, but if Silent Circle is classified as a telecommunications provider, then CALEA already requires them to have built it with real-time surveillance capability without tipping off either party involved in the communication. Since their system prevents this by design, I wouldn't be surprised if they get shut down entirely in the short term. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALEA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALEA