When I reached out to Safe-mail for comment, Amiram Ofir, Safe-mail’s President and CEO, responded in an email that the company and its employees “certainly are not aware of any criminal activity,” adding that the company does “follow court orders that are issued in Israel by an Israeli court. Any other law enforcement agency should contact the Israeli authorities.” It’s worth noting, however, that Israel signed a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) with the U.S. in 1998. An MLAT request was used to image the Silk Road web server, according to the criminal complaint of Sept. 27, 2013.
Ofir told me that communications between users and the web service are SSL protected, and that information stored on the server is encrypted with user-specific keys. When asked if Safe-mail has received court orders issued by an Israeli court on behalf of a non-Israeli law enforcement agency, such as the FBI, Ofir replied with a short “Yes.” My followup email, asking if Safe-mail has the ability to decrypt information without a user’s key, went unanswered.
