Does encryption really shield you from government's prying eyes?

June 14, 2013

If you’re thinking about encrypting email in light of revelations about U.S. government spying, you may be wasting your time. Recent leaks about surveillance efforts by the secretive National Security Agency have sparked a wide range of questions during the last week over online privacy, or lack thereof, as well as possible violations of the Constitution. But at this stage, the exact methods employed by the nation’s top intelligence agencies to gather information in the interest of national security are still fuzzy. At the very least, the NSA has confirmed that it is collecting Verizon phone records to examine their metadata and analyze call patterns between people. The NSA’s Prism system apparently goes even further, reportedly accessing servers at Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and other major companies, to collect data that the agency is storing for possible surveillance and investigations. With such large amounts of personal data at stake, one question is the extent to which encryption—a process for scrambling digital information so only certain groups of people can decipher it—can succeed in shielding consumers from government surveillance. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2042096/does-encryption-really-shield-you-from-governments-prying-eyes.html#tk.rss_all