I'm very wary of upvoting such posts lately, even related to Google. On one hand, we do need a large service provider like Google to adopt end to end encryption in e-mail and popular chat apps, because otherwise it's going to take forever, if we just try to convince people one by one.
On the other hand, Google's corporate goals are very much against end-to-end encryption and strong privacy, and they're even lobbying [1] against it. So it remains to be seen if it's an actual useful thing from Google, or just PR. And I realize that even if it's mainly for PR, that PR could lead other companies to want the same kind of PR, too, and implement such measures as well - but hopefully not in a gimmicky/not very useful way.
Making something like this available at all in major services would still be a big win, however it's still a far cry from actually being enabled by default (like the way Telegram doesn't enable end to end encryption by default - even though their main marketing message for it is "the most secure chat app in the world" - except for most people using it).
How does opposition to Rand Paul's "Fourth Amendment Protection Act" even make sense for ITAPS? The federal FAPA says exactly one thing: electronic records held by third parties are inadmissible in criminal proceedings unless obtained under consent or under color of a specific warrant demonstrating cause.
What are the business implications of such a law? Google and Facebook have no obvious commercial interest in the outcome of random criminal cases.
Isn't it a lot more likely that Vice just doesn't know what it's talking about and has gotten the bill wrong? That rather than opposing the "Fourth Amendment Protection Act", they're opposing individual state FAPAs derived from the 10th Amendment Center's Model State FAPA, which can hold a corporation in violation of state law for honoring a federal subpoena or court order, which would (a) create potentially 50 different new data protection policies and (b) put Internet companies in an absolutely impossible position of needing to choose between violating either a federal law or a state law?
> On the other hand, Google's corporate goals are very much against end-to-end encryption and strong privacy
If there's money in privacy, I don't think that would be the case. If Google made web-of-trust and key exchange easy, I'd pay to use it. I already pay for other things Google can't monetize with ads. So it isn't as if Google fails to see alternative monetization approaches.
On the other hand, Google's corporate goals are very much against end-to-end encryption and strong privacy, and they're even lobbying [1] against it. So it remains to be seen if it's an actual useful thing from Google, or just PR. And I realize that even if it's mainly for PR, that PR could lead other companies to want the same kind of PR, too, and implement such measures as well - but hopefully not in a gimmicky/not very useful way.
Making something like this available at all in major services would still be a big win, however it's still a far cry from actually being enabled by default (like the way Telegram doesn't enable end to end encryption by default - even though their main marketing message for it is "the most secure chat app in the world" - except for most people using it).
[1] - http://www.vice.com/read/are-google-and-facebook-just-preten...