Silent Circle Adds Android For Encrypted Voice And Video Calls

By Jon Matonis
Forbes
Wednesday, January 16, 2013


http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2013/01/16/silent-circle-adds-android-for-encrypted-voice-and-video-calls/

Silent Circle announced today that they have released Silent Phone for Android users which is now available for download in Google Play. As the Apple
iOS version has already been available, this new release is good news
for the many business users that require a cross platform communications
solution. However the encrypted text capability is still pending on the
Android version.

Headquartered in Washington D.C., Silent Circle
is a global, private encrypted communications service that provides
cutting-edge encrypted text, e-mail, mobile phone and video
teleconferencing services through a secure, proprietary network and
software apps. The company was co-founded by Mike Janke, a former Navy
SEAL, and Phil Zimmermann, the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and other Internet encryption for voice and data.

Silent
Circle CEO Mike Janke said, “We are pleased to offer Android users, who
comprise approximately 75 percent of the total smartphone market, a
robust service offering. Encryption of this strength and performance has
never been this easy for top executives and other espionage targets to
use in support of their job requirements, mobility and missions. Our
customers have the crucial advantage of placing highly secure calls
anywhere they can find a signal.”

A Silent Circle account requires
a $20.00 per month subscription which includes a unique Silent Phone
number for “inside the Circle” calls between two Silent Phone
subscribers over the company’s network. This makes it a very viral
service offering because users tend to recruit each other. Silent Phone
is the first and only smartphone service that enables secure video over
3G, 4G, EDGE or Wi-Fi networks.

Silent Phone deploys the ZRTP
peer-to-peer encryption protocol which is recognized as the leading
standard for secure end-to-end communication in a Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) telephone call.

Initially, this service will have
broad applicability for large enterprises that maintain a dispersed work
force in the field. With increasing corporate espionage and other
surveillance threats, the ability to communicate in a secure and private
fashion can not be taken for granted anymore. Unfortunately,
intercepted communications can mean a significant loss of revenue for
corporations that have unknowingly revealed trade secrets or business
information that an agile competitor can exploit. Silent Circle
addresses those threats without requiring any new hardware or changes in
the customer’s preferred devices.

Standing out in the industry,
Silent Circle also prides itself in offering private, encrypted
communication services for enterprises and individuals with absolutely no back doors.
According to the company, this means that there is no password recovery
option and there is no ability for Silent Circle to reveal anything
other than encrypted voice and encrypted data in complying with a
court-ordered subpoena.

[Disclosure: Author is consultant for a Silent Circle reseller based in Japan.]