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Google claims that your data is NSA proof

by on16 December 2014



Not advertiser proof though

In a bizarre move, Google has claimed that your data is much safer if you use its services. Given that Google is being taken to the cleaners in Holland for using personal data it collects to for advertising this might seem a bold claim, but it is one that Google chairman Eric Schmidt is keen to make.

Schmidt said that Google has worked hard to lock down the personal data it collects since revelations in the last year and a half about mass surveillance programs at the US National Security Agency. Schmidt said told a surveillance conference at the Cato Institute, that he learned of efforts by U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ to intercept traffic between Google data centres through a newspaper article.

“I was shocked,” Schmidt said. Google had envisioned a complicated method to sniff traffic, but “the fact that it had been done so directly... was really a shock to the company.”

Google responded to the revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden by spending a lot of money to lock down its systems, including 2,048-bit encryption on its traffic, Schmidt said.

“We massively encrypted our internal systems,” he said. “It’s generally viewed that this level of encryption is unbreakable in our lifetime by any sets of human beings in any way. We’ll see if that’s really true.”

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