Nearly two years after former government contractor Edward Snowdenrevealed details of extensivegovernment surveillance programs, a PewResearchreportsuggeststhat the news hasprompted some Americans tochange their approach to online privacy. <\/p>\n
The group surveyed about500 adult Americans, finding that nearly 90 percent of themhad heard about government surveillance programs and more than a third of those aware of the programs \"have taken at least one step to hide or shield their information from the government,\" the report said. <\/p>\n
Though the report found thata majority of Americans are skeptical of governmentsurveillanceprograms, it also foundvery few are taking the extra step of encrypting the content of their e-mails. In fact,half of those surveyed said using encryption software gives the government enough suspicion to monitor a U.S. citizen's communications. <\/p>\n
Most free e-mail providers automatically use a security feature known as SSL encryptionthat obscuresthe content of messages from third parties but leaves service providers such as Gmail or Yahooable to access the message themselves. To guarantee thatonly the sender and receiver can access the contents of messages, you have to use end-to-end encryption a process that typically involves specialized software and several additional steps. <\/p>\n
Using end-to-end can be overwhelming, especially for less technically adept users, because some of the tools are difficult to use, said independent security researcher Runa Sandvik. <\/p>\n
So it's not a huge surprise that Pew found e-mail encryption adoption rates are pretty abysmal. Only 2percent of Americans who had heard about government surveillance programs had since started using e-mail encryption tools, and only 10 percent more had even considered adopting it. Nearly half of the respondents said they hadn't adopted or considered such tools while anotherthird didn't evenknow what e-mail encryption is. <\/p>\n
In the wake of the revelations about NSA snooping, big tech companies have made privacy and security bigger parts of their public strategy sometimes garnering the ire of law enforcement officials who warnsuch effortscould limit the government's ability to track terror and crime online. And both Google and Yahooare working on plug-ins aimed at making it easier for users of their e-mail services to use end-to-end encryption. <\/p>\n
[Yahoos plan to get Mail users to encrypt their e-mail: Make it simple] <\/p>\n
But there's evidence that efforts to expand encryption may actually result in the U.S. government holding on to someAmericans'communications longer because it views the use of encryption as generally suspicious. An intelligencefunding bill passed last December said that Americans' communications incidentally collected under a controversial executive order could be retained longer than five years if \"enciphered or reasonably believed to have a secret meaning.\" <\/p>\n
According to Pew, Americans are pretty evenly split on on whetherusing encryption is enough to let the government monitor the communications of U.S. citizens.Nearly half, 49 percent, said it was acceptable for the government to monitor Americans if they \"used encryption software to hide files.\" <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n