Cloud Computing: Google to NSA – You’ll have to take our data the hard way

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

According to the Washington Post, "Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments." A series of revelations by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden shows that the United States, the United Kingdom, and perhaps other governments routinely spy on a broad range of Internet services, not in the targeted ways most people were led to believe.

With this response, Google sends the message that it won’t make it easy for governments to quietly conduct mass-spying efforts, but instead will force the government to explicitly acknowledge its spying, such as through court orders. This also indicates that Google, like other cloud computing providers, views the NSA scandal as a potential market killer. They are all in damage control mode, pushing out new privacy technology aimed at protecting data…

However, most experts understand that encryption is not a cure-all for data security. "Encrypting information flowing among data centers will not make it impossible for intelligence agencies to snoop on individual users of Google services, nor will it have any effect on legal requirements that the company comply with court orders or valid national security requests for data," the Washington Post story notes. "However, we do know that widespread use of encryption technology makes mass surveillance more difficult — whether conducted by governments or other sophisticated hackers."…

Read more from the source @  http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/google-nsa-youll-have-take-our-data-the-hard-way-226407