Enhanced encryption could throw a wrench in NSA mass surveillance
Craig Timberg at the Washington Post has an important story on efforts to keep online communications and user data safe from the prying eyes of Uncle Sam. Timberg explains that in the arms race between government agencies like the NSA and big tech companies, giants such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others, have begun to implement more and better encryption practices for online services. And even though encryption isn’t an absolute defense, it makes it much more difficult for the government to run large-scale surveillance programs:
[E]ncryption — essentially converting data into what appears to be gibberish when intercepted by outsiders — complicates government surveillance efforts, requiring that resources be devoted to decoding or otherwise defeating the systems…security experts say the time and energy required to defeat encryption forces surveillance efforts to be targeted more narrowly on the highest-priority targets — such as terrorism suspects — and limits the ability of governments to simply cast a net into the huge rivers of data flowing across the Internet.
Read the full article here.
