Google's Encryption Plan To Stifle NSA's Dragnet Will Raise the Stakes

CWmike writes "Google's strategy for making surveillance of user Internet activity more difficult for U.S. and foreign governments — started last year, but accelerated in June following the NSA leaks — is as much about economics as data encryption, experts say. Eric Grosse, vice president for security engineering at Google, told The Washington Post: 'It's an arms race.' The crux of the issue with Google making the NSA dragnet harder (knowing if the government wants in, it will get in) is that the NSA evaluates the tactic it uses by weighing the cost with the value of the information obtained. However, the agency does evaluate the tactic it uses by weighing the cost with the value of the information obtained. 'The NSA has turned the fabric of the Internet into a vast surveillance platform, but they are not magical,' Bruce Schneier, a renowned security technologist and cryptographer, wrote in The Guardian. 'They're limited by the same economic realities as the rest of us, and our best defense is to make surveillance of us as expensive as possible.' The NSA's capabilities for cracking encryption are not known outside the agency. However, the most secure part of an encryption system remains the 'mathematics of cryptography,' Schneier said. The greater weaknesses, and the ones mostly likely to be exploited by governments in general, are the systems at the start and end of the data flow. 'I worry a lot more about poorly designed cryptographic products, software bugs, bad passwords, companies that collaborate with the NSA to leak all or part of the keys, and insecure computers and networks.' Is this about citizen's rights, or a business decision (some might say an existential issue) for Google? Does it matter, and will it make a difference?"

Comments

Re:That's a relief

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at all the cute comments here who think that Google would magically shut their backdoors to the NSA anyway. Google probably even had to get permission from Baraq Hussein Sotero himself to feign this fake little righteous indignation, that they'd actually give a shit about Americans' privacy and freedom. Ye-heah, NSA, I'm finally standing up to you, don't you come around here no more...*Wink-wink*

Oh, and first War for Israel post. Putin and Assad may have put you in checkmate, but that's not gonna stop you from kicking the whole chessboard in a temper-tantrum and splattering the pieces everywhere.

-- Ethanol-fueled