Silent Circle, maker of anti-NSA Blackphone, raises $30 million

Silent Circle, a company that sells mobile phones and apps designed to thwart government surveillance, said on Wednesday it has raised $30 million in financing in a round led by Ross Perot Jr. and private investment fund Cain Capital LLC. The company sells apps for Apple's iOS and devices using Google's Android operating systems that encrypt phone calls and texts. It also offers secure video conferencing for machines running Microsoft Corp's Windows software. In February it launched "Blackphone," a mobile phone loaded with a customized version of the Android operating system known as PrivateOS and loaded with a suite of security and privacy apps. The company also said on Wednesday that it added Perot and Sir Peter Bonfield, the former chief executive and chairman of British Telecom, to its advisory board. It named former Dell executive Anurag Jain as vice chairman of the board. Silent Circle was founded by former Navy SEAL and security expert Mike Janke, Internet encryption expert Phil Zimmermann and Jon Callas, creator of Apple's whole disk encryption system. Reuters