PGP founder creates secure voice mobile app, bets people will pay for privacy

Cory Doctorow 7:00 pm Wed Jun 13, 2012

PGP creator Phil Zimmerman has launched Silent Circle, an encrypted phone-call app for Android and iOS. The service will likely cost $20/month, for which Zimmerman does not apologize: "This is not Facebook. Our customers are customers. They're not products. They're not part of the inventory" (from CNet).

Silent Circle's planned debut comes amid recent polls suggesting that Internet users remain concerned about online data collection (or at least are willing to tell pollsters so), with Facebook topping health insurers, banks, and even the federal government as today's No. 1 privacy threat. Yet even after a decade of startups that have tried to capitalize on these concerns, consumers spending their own money remain consistently difficult to persuade that paying for privacy is worth it.

Zimmermann hopes to overcome this reluctance by offering a set of services designed from the start to be simple to use: encrypted e-mail, encrypted phone calls, and encrypted instant messaging. (Encrypted SMS text messages are eventually planned too.)

Silent Circle | Worldwide Private Encrypted Communications

(via O'Reilly Radar)

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