What if Switzerland turns rogue

Though there are less chances of Switzerland turning into a surveillance state like the US, Kolab is designed for such a situation. Unlike Lavabit or Silent Circle, a shutdown won’t lock users out of their own data or disrupt communication.

“One unique property of MyKolab is that actually it has its own escape plan built in. If Switzerland changes its law and becomes an oppressive regime, everyone could take their data along with the software that runs it and set up the service somewhere else or have a third party do it for them. This is something you can’t do with Lavabit or Silent Circle because they are proprietary providers. If it was Kolab those users could have just taken the Kolab with them even if the service provider shut down. If you have the skills you can take your server and put at your own place unless you find someone who you can trust. If you don’t you can work with someone who does and who has your trust. If you want to just flee with your data, you can. MyKolab finances the development of Kolab in a manner that it also opens that escape hatch wider and wider and giving people more power over themselves.”

People have started migrating to a freer land

MyKolab is definitely a much better solution than closed source services like Lavabit and people have started to realize that. They are experiencing a surge in traffic after the shutdown.

“Yes, we see a lot of refugees from those services coming over to us,” said Greve.

But can email still be secure?

After the disclosure by Snowden, people have started asking the question whether emails are secure anymore.

Greve explains, “People say that email is fundamentally screwed and you can’t trust anyone and there is some truth in it, but the actual truth is you can encrypt things fairly well. You have to do it right, set things up in the right way to do so. It’s not impossible to create a fairly robust transmission even of unsigned email, but most servers are not configured to use this. It’s the receiving server that determines the level of security and from a user perspective its not clear what the receiving server actually supports. So that’s a problem. So I don’t quite know that when I send this email to you whether your server is set up in that way.”

“If you are sending messages from a secure server to a Hotmail account it’s more or less sending it into the NSA database. So once the email leaves the trustworthy jurisdiction it’s privacy value is limited and you don’t have the full protection of privacy anymore. However if two users communicate within Switzerland that communication is fairly secure. If there are two Kolab users then it is extremely secure as the email will never hit the Internet. It’s never on the Internet so no one can spy.”

Noted free software journalist and legal expert Pamela Jones has publicly migrated herself to MyKolab and there are many more who are making the switch. For obvious reasons Kolab can’t disclose who are their clients, but Greve says “we see lawyers, journalists, doctors join the MyKolab service to protect their client privilege and professional integrity. And we know the software itself is used by at least one company in the Fortune 100.”

Let’s move

The overall impression that we get after this interaction is that there are still companies and countries which strongly believe in privacy and protect it. Kolab Systems, due to use of Free Software and based out of a freer country offer extremely secure services – much more secure than Lavabit and Silent Circle. Concerned users are already migrating to it.

It’s fortunate, and unfortunate at the same time, that once again a free country and a free software company has come forward to offer privacy and freedom to those who desire it and but can’t find in the land of the which was once free.

God bless America!