Encrypted email companies provide a private service that offers an alternative to commercial email servers. The recent Snowden revelations do shed some light on dark mail, as well as the targeting by government agencies.
Here’s an excellent audio presentation regarding the topic. DLIGU (Don’t Let It Go Unheard): Interview with Lavabit (Snowden email provider) Founder Ladar Levison.
In the Snowden case, it turns out that the company he allegedly used for email encryption, Lavabit, had to completely shut down after the U.S. government demanded the keys to encryption. Although it remains unconfirmed publicly, it is likely that Snowden was the target sought after by the feds.
The founder of the Lavabit, Ladar Levison, gave an interview with BBC News concerning internet privacy, which is one of the hottest topics of the year.
The founder did not want to compromise the accounts of his customers and he refused to hand over the encryption keys without a struggle. Levison has challenged the government and has gone to court over these sensitive issues.
Another tech company has teamed up with Lavabit and the Dark Mail Alliance may change the way email is done.
Tailored Access Operations (TAO) is a cyber-warfare intelligence-gathering unit that is used by the feds to ‘monitor’ numerous services: alibabaForumUser, doubleclickID, rocketmail, hi5Uid, hotmailCID, linkedin, mailruMrcu, msnMailToken64, qq, facebook, simbarUuid, twitter, yahoo, ymail, youTube.
“By collaboration with the British GHCQ, Google services could be attacked too, including Gmail.”
XKeyscore gives the NSA the ability to gain access to any computer in almost every country. In fact, the NSA has its own team of hackers.
