<i>Companies should be encouraged to aggressively strengthen the security of their products, rather than undermine that security.</i><p>On the other hand, I think they should most certainly not be encouraged to secure products <i>against</i> their users:<p><a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html</a><p>What worries me the most about this seemingly frantic push for more encryption is that it will accelerate the proliferation and acceptance of locked-down, user-hostile devices. Security is important but so is freedom, and I feel like we've already sacrificed too much of the latter for the former...
Well, why not massively fund Thunderbird with a focus on usability and end-to-end encryption then? :-( Or maybe invest in Signal to they can finally start to fix and improve at a remotely competitive pace?
Encryption and security has always been a balance between convenience and capability. Although HTPPS and such are mostly transparent to end-user, we can see that slow adoption of public key encryption (GPG) indicates that people either need to be educated or the user experience needs to improve drastically. It's taken many years but there's a long road ahead.
If you are not sure where you are with the subject of encryption, backdoors and privacy I suggest watching this video. It is also a great resource to share with people who are not so technical.<p>This video is a production of the Washington DC Chapter of the Internet Society. It is meant to be a starting point for discussions about encryption, privacy, and cybersecurity.<p>The Internet Exposed: Encryption, Backdoors and Privacy – and the Quest to Maintain Trust<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2D5dVtHXV8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2D5dVtHXV8</a>