For German, Swiss Privacy Start-Ups, a Post-Snowden Boom

US andChinese tech companies are not the only ones profiting from the Snowden effect.

Since news broke that former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden disclosed alleged U.S. government surveillance methods worldwide, secure messaging and so-called NSA-proof products and companies have sprouted across Germany and Switzerland, two countries who take their privacy laws very seriously.

While not in mainstream use yet, the trend is growing.

Some German and Swiss companies have also used the media attention as selling points.

When Edward Snowden unveiled the extent of surveillance by the U.S. government, many scientists in Cern were shocked, said Khoi Nguyen of Geneva-based Protonmail, a start-up marketing an easy-to-use, encrypted email service.

Lavaboom, a German email provider, was a direct reaction to the Snowden revelations. The companys name plays on the U.S. encrypted service provider Lavabit, which Mr. Snowden used. Lavabit was forced to close down in August 2013, after being forced to disclose classified documents. At the time, Lavabit founder Ladar Levison said he was prohibited by law from discussing the reasons for its closure.

Lavabit offers users a three-tiered service. A free subscription gets you secure storage, two-factor authentication, and complete encryption. Premium subscriptions offer whats called a zero-knowledge serviceany data generated by an application will never be readable on the server it is storedas well as three-factor authentication.

Our existence was a direct response to the closure of Snowdens email service Lavabit, Lavaboom co-founder Bill Franklin said.

Mr. Franklin, a U.K. citizen, along with German co-founder Felix Mueller-Irion, consciously chose Germany to base their mail service.

Data protection laws in Germany are supportive in offering customers a private sphere, Mr. Franklin said. German data protection laws are considered to rank among the strictest in the world and there are laws protecting journalists, doctors, lawyers and other professional groups from revealing their sources.

Read more from the original source:
For German, Swiss Privacy Start-Ups, a Post-Snowden Boom