Encrypted email providers Lavabit and Silent Circle recently announced that they were coming together for a project called the Dark Mail Alliance. At the time, it was told that the new system would be a private, end-to-end encryption alternative. Now, Ladar Levision, founder of Lavabit, has now turned to Kickstarter to get funding for the new project. The project is looking to “clean up and release the source code that was used to power Lavabit as a free and open source project with support for Dark Mail added.” Detailing what Dark Mail is all about, the Kickstarter page says that the new protocol is a “newly developed messaging tool… designed to provide end-to-end encryption of both the message itself and the email in transit.” This basically means that both the message content and the metadata will be encrypted.
Dark Mail Alliance is now looking to Kickstarter for crowdfunding
The rationale to look for crowdfunding, according to Levison, is simple. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations over the past few months about clandestine data gathering programmes have raised a lot of eyebrows. The founder reasons that the slew of reports have raised enough concerns about the security of digital communication to make crowdfunding a viable option.
The project is now looking to gather $196,608 to revive the secure email services that Lavabit originally provided and also open its source so that other email providers can adopt the new protocol. The money will be used to hire programmers with FOSS development experience and who have worked with C, JavaScript, HTML, SQL and JSON, according to the project page. So far, the project, with 21 days still to go, has raised $33,229 with 926 backers for the campaign. Dark Mail, it is hoped, will make email encryption more effective. Currently, the moment a user emails someone who is not using end-to-end encryption, third parties have a chance to listen in. Dark Mail aims to keep more digital communication out of that loop. The new system, apart from being more extensive, is also aiming to keep the encryption process invisible to the user so that they don’t have to be a security expert to send out an encrypted email.
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