Mayayana
| >The spooks also have an interest in cloud. If everyone | >conducts their lives through commercial cloud services then | >government spy beancounters have a very easy job. | | only if it's not encrypted. |

That's an interesting point. There may be some value in encryption, and some companies -- like Google and MS -- have been going through the motions of setting that up.

But those companies have also signed on to PRISM. They show no indication that they care at all about their customers unless it affects their business directly. The distinctive feature about cloud services, like free webmail, is that the data stays on a corporate server. I don't see any reason to trust that the likes of Google and MS won't find a way to feed the NSA while also providing encryption. For them encryption is probably just a marketing tool to cover up what Mr. Snowden has exposed.

| nothing stops the user from encrypting what they upload or choosing a | service where encryption is a priority. |

It *may* be relevant to use heavy encryption on files you put in places like Dropbox. But with something like webmail the encryption is not up to you.

And it's really only there to protect your credit card number as it travels from pointA to pointB. If you want true security in you email you'd need something like PGP encryption *on both ends*. The recipient would need to also use PGP software and have your key for decryption.

All that is to say that encryption is not just nonsense, but when it comes to spook spying, encryption is not going to provide a real solution.