Google, as announced on Friday, is trying to encrypt all information moving between its data centers.
Google ’s move is one of the most concrete signs that recent revelations about sweeping surveillance efforts by the National Security Agency have sparked significant backlash in the U.S. technology industry. Google’s encryption initiative, which was initially approved last year, accelerated in June as the company seemingly at least fought to protect its reputation, according to a Washington Post article .
Encrypting information from its data centers won't make it impossible for intelligence agencies to spy on individual users of Google services, but the company said it will make mass surveillance more difficult, whether it comes from governments or hackers.
“It’s a game,” said Eric Grosse, Google’s vice president of security. “We view government agencies as very experienced players in this game.”
Experts say that in addition to the US government, there are other governments with very sophisticated hacking skills such as China, Russia, Britain and Israel.
The NSA is trying to bypass encryption using many methods, such as obtaining encryption keys, using supercomputers to crack codes, or tampering with encryption standards to make them more vulnerable to external attacks, according to reports in the New York Times and the Guardian.
But these publications make it clear that encryption complicates government surveillance efforts, since it requires resources to decode or whatever other method they use to manage to read the code.
Security experts say the time and energy required to bypass encryption only targets high-priority targets like terrorists and limits the ability of governments to monitor the entire internet.
Once again, the timing of Google's announcement coincides with the storm and great uproar that the revelations by the New York Times and the Guardian have caused.
