Email Encrypting and Protecting Privacy

Email Encrypting and Protecting Privacy

I've looked through Stack Exchange before asking this question to see
which is the most pertinent place to ask this, and it would either be here
or Security Exchange. As some of you know, Lavabit and Silent Circle shut
down, because they respect their users privacy and currently there's a
battle going on here in the USA about privacy and the internet (this
discussion may also be spreading in other areas too).
Is there an alternative to these that the U.S. Government can't shut down
(would this mean that they are non-US companies) that anyone knows of? I
ask because, for an example, if I wanted to send stock trading information
to a friend (we talk about "value investments" regularly and why we like
them, or how we've tweaked our methods to be more precise), I don't want
employees (or anyone really) outside of my friend to know this
information, which is the purpose of privacy protection. If "officials"
can access it, on some level, others probably can too. Or, some really
advanced hackers could theoretically obtain that information (which is why
them storing this data is disturbing because this is the same institution
that couldn't prevent the Tech Bubble in 2000, the Housing Bubble in 2009,
and on and on ...).