Snooping Revelations Drive Interest in Encryption
They should
The fallout from the latest revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs has yet to be measured, but one possible outcome could be an increased interest in encryption.
The U.K. publication Guardian reported on the NSA's XKeyscore program, which collects millions of e-mails, Web browser sessions, chats and other communications in search of activity it deems suspicious. According to the Guardian, the NSA claims to have 700 XKeyscore servers at 150 sites around the world, and during one 30-day period in 2012 it collected more than 41 billion records. …
After the initial reports that the NSA was collecting metadata on millions of domestic phone calls, Silent Circle, a company that provides peer-to-peer encryption, said its business shot up 420 percent in two-and-a-half weeks — and most of the interest came from government.