A recent New York Times article reports that the private industry is concerned with government surveillance and angry at the over-exposure to which private companies were subjected following the National Security Agency (NSA) revelations earlier this year.
Specifically, entities such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter have taken action, including publishing the number of government requests they receive and engaging in private conversations with officials.
Regarding government intrusions into internal networks, according to The Times, Google, among others, is changing its security keys and building up its own fiber-optic lines through which its data flows, making it more difficult for outsiders to penetrate the internal networks.
Facebook . . . said it was adding the encryption method of so-called perfect forward secrecy, which Google did in 2011. This means that even if someone gets access to a secret key, that person cannot decrypt past messages and traffic.
Yahoo and Facebook similarly announced last summer that they switched to secure browsing by default or will within the next twelve months.
Here’s a quote from Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO:
The government blew it. The government comment was, ‘Oh, don’t worry, basically we’re not spying on any Americans.’ Right, and it’s like, ‘Oh wonderful, yeah, it’s like that’s really helpful to companies that are really trying to serve people around the world and really going to inspire confidence in American Internet companies.
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