Security Geek-Ed

Bruce Schneier had a recent post that references an article in the Register available at <http://preview.tinyurl.com/a9hn2n>. Briefly stated, it appears that NSA is ready to pay a lot of money for someone to crack Skype encryption, mainly because more and more criminals (including terrorist organizations) are using this technology instead of phone calls. 

I won’t quote any more of the article: it’s definitely worth reading. And I still haven’t completely figured out where I stand on this. At this time, I reluctantly have to stand with those who say that the right to privacy is greater than the right to allow unlimited and unmonitored surveillance of private communication.  Perhaps I would feel differently if I believed that government agencies could be trusted to do the “right thing” with the data and with the right to access … but I don’t, and I think the evidence will bear me out on that. So if PGP and Skype keep my communications private: good.