Delete comment from: Google Online Security Blog
We recognize that this sort of encryption will probably only be used for very sensitive messages or by those who need added protection
I certainly hope not. The whole point, in my estimation (or one of them, at any rate), of the Snowden revelations was just how badly the entire web is in need of encryption, to prevent everything from garden-variety cyber-theft to surveillance by governments. If encryption is seen by most people as something one does only when one needs to send sensitive messages, it will be very easy - too easy - for said bad actors, governments, etc to know which messages to spend more time trying to crack.
Additionally, people who more-habitually use encryption as a matter of course in such a world would be de facto penalized because their ordinary activities would by definition bring them under extra scrutiny. The only way to prevent this is for people to up their game - for most people to begin thinking of encryption as a habit that needs to be acquired and practiced, just as a hundred years ago, people from the country would learn the habit of locking their front door every time they went out, if they moved to the city.
Aug 12, 2014, 12:50:17 AM