NSA Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web

According to the New York Times (September 5th, 2013), “The agency (NSA) has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show.”

Amongst the many conclusions arising from such activities, this means that the NSA (US Government) has succeeded in abusing the Internet, a by-the-people-for-the-people environment that was meant surveillance-free and to be kept away from government control. Now this is scary. And even worse, this seems to have been achieved with the connivance of private companies such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft—companies that were supposed to take good care of their customers’ privacy, the people’s privacy. Some should be ashamed.

Not long ago, one e-mail encryption company, Lavabit, closed rather than comply with the NSA’s demands for customer information. Ladar Levison, its founder, wrote a public letter to his disappointed customers, offering an ominous warning:
“Without Congressional action or a strong judicial precedent,” he wrote, “I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.”

Ladar has earned our admiration, but his decision reveals a scary question: Are private companies capitulating to the powers that be?

Faced with such news, we are relieved to confirm eEvidence has never been the target of any pressures from any public agency. In managing huge amounts of email information, from thousands of customers around the world, including the US, we long ago decided that the best way to protect our customers’ data was to keep it encrypted and stored in European data centers. In the near future, though, we feel we will need to come up with even better ways to grant privacy to our customers. We’ll do our best, so thank you for trusting us so far.

Read the full NYT article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html

Conclusion

The NSA case shows that online privacy is fragile, even with big tech providers. At eEvidence, we ensure your communications remain private and legally valid through secure, registered email services hosted in Europe. Learn more here.