Since the Edward Snowden disclosures, tech companies have taken multiple steps to rebuild user trust, including beefing up the encryption in their products and services.
But with the terrorist attacks in France this month, will governments succeed in pressuring tech firms to help with the surveillance of users?
As Levi Sumagaysay wrote here, British Prime Minister David Cameron is in Washington this week and reportedly plans to speak to President Obama about putting more pressure on tech firms to cooperate with British law enforcement and national security agencies.
U.S. government officials have complained about steps taken by tech companies such as Apple and Google to expand encryption in their products and services
If the government is prohibited from monitoring chats and calls, Cameron suggested in a speech this week, Internet firms might be banned from doing business in the country, The New York Times wrote in an editorial.
Even the much-maligned government bulk collection of domestic phone data received a boost this week.
A new National Academy of Sciences report says there is no good substitute for collecting information on every call made in the U.S.
President Obama had wanted researchers to study the feasibility of using software that targets data prior to collection.
But anything short of bulk data collection deprives intelligence agencies potentially useful information, researchers said, the New York Times reported. Instead, controls should be put in place controlling how the data, once collected, is viewed and used, they said.
After all, the job of finding the needle in the haystack doesn t get easier if the haystack is smaller, the researchers said.
Above: The National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, MD. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
