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Google And Yahoo Fight Back Against NSA With Goal Of Spy-Free Web

googleInternet giants Google and Yahoo are taking serious steps to protect users’ data from NSA and other surveillance programs, and some media reports indicate that Facebook and Microsoft are also increasing their security.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer [1] wrote an open letter to Yahoo users saying the company was taking steps to increasing security and to stopping surveillance of consumers by the NSA.

“There is nothing more important to us than protecting our users’ privacy,” she wrote.

For starters, Yahoo email recently began using “https” encryption with a “2048-bit key.” So what does that mean? Simply put, encryption makes it much more difficult to be detected. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden said that “encryption works” and that “properly implemented, crypto systems are on one of the few things you can rely upon” to avoid NSA detection.

Yahoo is going a step beyond email and encrypting all of its traffic, although the move won’t be final until early in 2014.

The True Christian Heritage and Christian Ideals That Are Woven Into The Very Fabric Of The Constitution… [2]

So what are other companies doing? Here’s a rundown:

Money playing a role

Money certainly is playing a role in the companies’ efforts. The US cloud computing industry alone could lose between $22 and $35 billion [6] over the next few years because of surveillance fears, according to David Castro of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

A survey by the Cloud Security Alliance found that 56 percent of non-Americans would be less likely to use a US-made cloud computing solution because of NSA surveillance. The same survey found that 10 percent of non-Americans had canceled a contract with a US company because of Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA surveillance [7].

“We’ve already seen impacts on the businesses,” Richard Salgado, Google’s director of law enforcement and information security, told a Senate subcommittee [8] on Nov. 13. NSA programs have “a great potential for doing serious damage to the competitive of US companies,” Salgado added.

“It’s very important that the users of our services understand that we are stewards of their data, we hold it responsibly, we treat it with respect,” Salgado said.

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