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Silent Circle gets first telco distributor for encrypted comms

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  Silent Circle gets first telco distributor for encrypted comms RS Wood  <rswood@therandymon.com> - 2014-02-19 14:50 +0000
    Re: Silent Circle gets first telco distributor for encrypted comms cykros@devio.us - 2014-02-21 19:05 +0000
      Re: Silent Circle gets first telco distributor for encrypted comms Oregonian Haruspex <bob_davis_retired@yahoo.com> - 2014-02-21 13:12 -0800
        Re: Silent Circle gets first telco distributor for encrypted comms RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-02-22 12:17 +0000

#572 — Silent Circle gets first telco distributor for encrypted comms

From the Can you hear me now?  Good. department:
Title: Silent Circle gets its first telco distributor, as KPN prepares to offer encrypted communications
Author: David Meyer
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2014 09:06:36 -0500
Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/iO5rF7yQChA/
Podcast Download URL: http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/6599daccfd7e897e68744fe0065e5a2e?s=96&d=retro&r=PG

The Dutch telecoms giant KPN has partnered up with Silent Circle, the U.S.
security firm that boasts privacy veterans Phil Zimmermann (pictured above)
and Jon Callas among its founders, to offer encrypted voice and video calls,
as well as secure messaging, to its customers across the Netherlands, Germany
and Belgium.

Silent Circle was founded[1] a few years ago by Zimmermann and Callas (who
set up Pretty Good Privacy[2] or PGP in the 1990s) and ex-Navy Seal Mike
Janke. The company hit the headlines last year when it shut down its Silent
Mail email service[3] to protect users’ privacy, but its big products have
always been encrypted voice, video and text communications for mobile and
desktop.

The main advantages of these services are that no metadata is saved, and
there’s no centralized repository for the encryption keys that can be legally
or illegally accessed by law enforcement, intelligence agencies or other
hackers. (This was the problem with Silent Mail — the usability of webmail
suffers if users have to handle their own keys, and email leaks metadata by
its nature.)

The customers for Silent Circle’s services, which amount to a super-secure
Skype alternative, include Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and
many other businesses and professionals that have to take security and
confidentiality seriously. Now that user base may be set to grow quite
dramatically.

As KPN said in a (Dutch) statement[4] on Wednesday, it is the first telco to
offer Silent Circle to its iOS and Android-toting customers, and indeed it
has exclusivity on the product in the markets it serves.

Silent Phone and Silent Text will from June be offered in KPN’s Open Cloud
Store[5], which largely caters to the telco’s business customers, at a
monthly price of $9.95 or an annual price of $99.95, according to a PC World[6]
report.

This really is a big deal for Silent Circle, as its services can only encrypt
communications between customers that have Silent Circle installed on their
devices – the bigger the pool, the more usable the tool. KPN runs several
brands in the Netherlands, as well as Base in Belgium and E-Plus in Germany.
Silent Circle also recently inked a distribution deal with inTechnology[7]
for the Australian and New Zealand markets.

The next big step will be the launch of Blackphone[8], a thoroughly Silent
Circle-ified handset that will be made by Spanish manufacturer Geeksphone.
It’s also worth keeping an eye on Dark Mail[9], a replacement for Silent Mail
that is being developed in collaboration with Lavabit, the other notable
secure mail service to shutter its doors last year in the wake of the NSA
scandal.
[image 10]

[image 12][11]

Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial[13].

* Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013[14]
* Forecast: the converged mobile messaging market[15]
* Analyzing the wearable computing market[16]

[image 18][17][image 19]

Links:
[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/phil-zimmermann-silent-circle-2012-9 (link)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy (link)
[3]: http://gigaom.com/2013/08/09/another-u-s-secure-email-service-shuts-down-to-protect-customers-from-authorities/ (link)
[4]: http://corporate.kpn.com/pers/persberichten/kpn-biedt-versleutelde-communicatie-in-samenwerking-met-encryptiebedrijf-silent-circle.htm (link)
[5]: https://www.opencloudstore.nl (link)
[6]: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2099160/kpn-strikes-deal-with-silent-circle-to-offer-encrypted-phone-calls.html (link)
[7]: http://www.intechnology.com.au/news-events/intechnology-distribution-secures-deal-with-global-encrypted-communications-firm-silent-circle (link)
[8]: http://gigaom.com/2014/01/15/meet-blackphone-a-security-centric-handset-from-some-serious-encryption-veterans/ (link)
[9]: http://gigaom.com/2013/11/28/promising-secure-and-easy-to-use-email-evolution-dark-mail-scores-212k-in-kickstarter-cash/ (link)
[10]: http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=gigaom.com&blog=14960843&post=818076&subd=gigaom2&ref=&feed=1 (image)
[11]: http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=/1008864/Gigaom_RSS_300x250&sz=300x250&c=562020 (link)
[12]: http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=/1008864/Gigaom_RSS_300x250&sz=300x250&c=562020 (image)
[13]: http://research.gigaom.com/?utm_source=europeutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=818076+silent-circle-gets-its-first-telco-distributor-as-kpn-prepares-to-offer-encrypted-communications&utm_content=superglaze (link)
[14]: http://pro.gigaom.com/blog/podcast-mobile-winners-and-losers-in-2012-and-what-to-expect-in-2013/?utm_source=europeutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=818076+silent-circle-gets-its-first-telco-distributor-as-kpn-prepares-to-offer-encrypted-communications&utm_content=superglaze (link)
[15]: http://pro.gigaom.com/2012/12/the-converged-mobile-messaging-market-analysis-and-forecast/?utm_source=europeutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=818076+silent-circle-gets-its-first-telco-distributor-as-kpn-prepares-to-offer-encrypted-communications&utm_content=superglaze (link)
[16]: http://pro.gigaom.com/2012/07/the-wearable-computing-market-a-global-analysis/?utm_source=europeutm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=818076+silent-circle-gets-its-first-telco-distributor-as-kpn-prepares-to-offer-encrypted-communications&utm_content=superglaze (link)
[17]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?a=iO5rF7yQChA:ub_CwTP0i3c:yIl2AUoC8zA (link)
[18]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?d=yIl2AUoC8zA (image)
[19]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~4/iO5rF7yQChA (image)

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#677

It'll be to see if this ever makes its way to American markets.  I'm
not sure enough consumers here care enough to really push the big
companies to do anything, or promote smaller companies to any degree of
success in most places.

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#682

On 2014-02-21 19:05:11 +0000, cykros@devio.us said:

> It'll be to see if this ever makes its way to American markets.  I'm
> not sure enough consumers here care enough to really push the big
> companies to do anything, or promote smaller companies to any degree of
> success in most places.

I'm not sure I'd trust a telco-provided secure phone anyway.

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#696

On 2014-02-21, Oregonian Haruspex <bob_davis_retired@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On 2014-02-21 19:05:11 +0000, cykros@devio.us said:
>
>> It'll be to see if this ever makes its way to American markets.  I'm
>> not sure enough consumers here care enough to really push the big
>> companies to do anything, or promote smaller companies to any degree of
>> success in most places.
>
> I'm not sure I'd trust a telco-provided secure phone anyway.
>

It seems like the telcos are going to be involved somewhere anyway,
since it's their hardware and network equipment.  Maybe I don't want
them providing me my device, as I couldn't trust them to not have
tampered with it.  But I never liked them selling me their stupid
"branded" devices anyway.

I'm convinced the USA remains nearly a decade behind the rest of the
world in terms of cellphone tech and markets.  The word for the day is
"oligopoly" (rhymes with "bullshit.")

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