Google to encrypt cloud storage

Adam Back adam at cypherspace.org
Tue Aug 20 17:46:27 PDT 2013


Well I think its fair to denigrate it as obfuscation not encryption if the
key lives on the same machine as the ciphertext.  At best it makes it less
risky to dispose of dodgy disks - now and then such things turn up on ebay
with client data.  At least if you encrypt it properly, and do NOT put the
key on the disk, then you can safely toss them in a dumpster, not physically
destroy them etc.

Adam

On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 02:52:25PM +0200, rysiek wrote:
>Thing is, this encryption scheme (in which, from what I read, Google has
>access to "master keys" and has the technical ability to decrypt data once
>it's subpoenad) brings no additional safety to users. It sounds great ("we
>support encryption! and we're doing it with several keys! that has to be safe,
>eh?"), but it does effectively nothing to actually protect users and their
>data from PRISM and similar programmes.
>
>And that means it will be this harder for us to explain why this is a bad
>scheme ("wait, you're saying encryption is evil? now I am confused!") and why
>people should use other methods of protecting their privacy and their data.



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