Two US companies that have become symbols for the fight against ongoing National Security Agency surveillance have announced they are building a new kind of secure email service that will encrypt a user’s email, making it nearly impossible to monitor.

Lavabit and Silent Mail both shut down suddenly in August. The news came just two months after the revelation that the NSA is combing through vast quantities of the world’s emails. Both companies opted to close operations rather than grant the intelligence agency access to users’ accounts.

Both companies resurfaced Wednesday, announcing in an email conference keynote that they have joined forces as the first two members of the new ‘Dark Mail Alliance.’ Lavabit founder Ladar Levison and Silent Circle CEO Mike Janke said they are working on a new open-source tool that promises to offer peer-to-peer, end-to-end encryption for any email service. 

The cryptologists admitted it is hard to point to a specific launch date, but said they hope it will be available by the second quarter of 2014. 

Continue reading at:  http://rt.com/usa/dark-mail-privacy-email-encryption-995/