* Eugen Leitl quotes:
The traffic shown in the slides below is now all encrypted and the work the NSA/GCHQ staff did on understanding it, ruined.
Encryption is not a solution to the problem. The attack on Google shows that NSA/GCHQ that companies in Western countries and their employees are legitimate targets for covert operations by their intelligence services (same for the BND attacks on 1&1 and other German ISPs, we don't have to single out the Obama administration or the British here). Once that is established, those intelligence services can use all the tools in their portfolio. This includes turning employees against their colleagues and their employer, and things far worse. Suddenly, passive eavesdropping might not have been so bad after all. If you are their target, you lose. The solution is to make it illegal that they target you, reign in executive privilege (again, a global issue) and restore the rule of law. Obviously, that's a bit more difficult to turn on some crypto.