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Two Years After Snowden Leaks, Encryption Tools Are Gaining Users

Posted by Soulskill on from the cryptic-response dept.

Patrick O'Neill writes: It's not just DuckDuckGo — since the first Snowden articles were published in June 2013, the global public has increasingly adopted privacy tools that use technology like strong encryption to protect themselves from eavesdroppers as they surf the Web and use their phones. The Tor network has doubled in size, Tails has tripled in users, PGP has double the daily adoption rate, Off The Record messaging is more popular than ever before, and SecureDrop is used in some of the world's top newsrooms.

2 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. "PGP has double the adoption rate...." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sadly, it could have 10 times the adoption rate, and to an excellent approximation, it would still be true that nobody uses it.

  2. Re: Secure Skype Replacement? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That argument only works if you are a "person of interest". For 99.9999% of people, the point is to avoid mass surveillance, not targeted surveillance. Yes, if the government targets YOU, you are fucked. But that is not the threat model that applies to almost everyone, and it remains highly useful to frustrated the mass surveillance state.