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from the but-we-know-who-your-friends-are dept.
Today Google announced the alpha release of a Chrome plugin that works with their Gmail service to enable end-to-end encryption for email sent through their system. This will reduce Google's ability to data-mine the content of messages, but it won't stop anyone from tracking senders and recipients. Their plugin is based on OpenPGP and they are publishing the source code.
With a focus on ease-of-use lets hope that this plugin is enough to start a broader movement towards end-to-end encryption for all email, regardless of provider.
Editor's Note: This is an early release of the code and should not be relied upon just yet. Google invites the community to test and evaluate the extension; it is even eligible for their Vulnerability Reward Program.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04 2014, @06:53PM
Will just encrypt their messages with an external encryption program like PGP or GPG and attach it to a blank email (or one using single characters in it for the subject and body like a . or ? and ! for fun [omgfacts.com]) and email that. Absolutely NOTHING available to datamine unless Google can break the encryption on the attached file or hand it off to the NSA via a court order or National Security Letter. At this level of security, a keyfile/password/passphrase [xkcd.com] with 256 bits or more of entropy in it should assure 'perfect security' [stackexchange.com] unless Google/NSA has got non-trivial quantum computing up and running properly. Otherwise, the NSA will just go for the weak spots in the implementation/protocol as revealed by Edward Snowden [wikipedia.org] in June, 2013 [wikipedia.org] (1-yr anniversary) or just use 'rubber hose cryptanalysis' [xkcd.com].