The Death Of Encrypted Communications – Lavabit and Silent Circle Shut Down

On Thursday, Lavabit, an encrypted e-mail service linked to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, hinted at a U.S. government investigation as the reason for its closure. Ladar Levison, the owner of Lavabit, said he was “forced to make a difficult decision” and that he would like to discuss the circumstances but was prevented from doing so because “Congress has passed laws that say otherwise.”

Silent Circle also announced that it is discontinuing its encrypted e-mail service on Thursday, the second such closure in just a few hours in an apparent attempt to avoid government scrutiny that may threaten its customers’ privacy. Silent Circle’s CTO Jon Callas explained that the move is a result of outside pressures. The shut down for Silent Circle is just e-mail. Silent Circle’s phone, video and text encryption systems are still up and running.

From the sounds of it, the owner of Lavabit closed his email encryption service due to the government finding out that an account being owned by Edward Snowden. If this was Facebook or some other big entity, wouldn’t the government just get all of Snowden’s information and delete his account. It almost sounds like certain groups are being targeted and forced to close, which isn’t exactly a good thing.