Google accelerates data encryption efforts to thwart NSA snooping

Google has accelerated its efforts towards encrypting the information that has been flowing through its data centres across the world to thwart snooping by NSA and intelligence agencies, according to a report by Washington Post.

Google steps up encryption

Now, it is believed that encrypting information flowing among data centers doesn’t make it impossible for intelligence agencies to snoop on individual users of Google services. It wont even effect legal requirements that the company has to comply with court orders or valid national security requests for data. But according to the company officials and independent security experts, the wider use of encryption technology makes mass surveillance more difficult irrespective of who conducts it (government of other sophisticated hackers). Apart from the US government, sophisticated government hacking efforts emerge from China, Russia, Britain and Israel.

Eric Grosse, Vice President for security engineering at Google, said, “It’s an arms race. We see these government agencies as among the most skilled players in this game.”

Reportedly, NSA defeats encryption using a variety of means which includes obtaining encryption “keys” to decode communications, super-computers to break codes, and also influencing encryption standards to make them more vulnerable to attack. This is based on documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

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The reports also said that encryption complicates government surveillance efforts as it requires resources to be devoted to decoding the systems. According to security experts, the immense time and energy required to defeat encryption forces surveillance to narrow down on their highest-priority target. This limits governments from casting a net into the huge river of data flowing across the Internet.