Last week the email provider Lavabit.com was closed. It was one of few secure email provider. It was used by Edward Snowden along with other privacy sensitive users. Ladar Levison (founder of Lavabit.com) did not say what it had been asked to do, only that it was legally prohibited from sharing the events leading to its decision. He don’t want to “become complicit in crimes against the American people.”. In an interview he said:
If you knew what I know about email, you might not use it either.
A second secure email service was closed last week too. Lavabit’s note has led to Silent Circle dropping its email service, saying “We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now.”. In the opinion of Phil Zimmermann and other privacy activist working for Silent Circle there is no way to get email secure:
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.
Because of publications by NSA whistleblowers like Snowden, Binney, Bamford or Drake we get knowledge about vast surveillance programs. Email is one of the first targets for communication surveillance. It seems, there is no email privacy any more. You may re-think you communication behavior and don’t use email anymore as far as possible in future. Think about Jabber (XMPP), private messages in forums, TorChat… More ideas are welcome.
from here