The Latest in IT Security

Eric Schmidt thinks encryption is the answer to many of the internets problems. Googles executive chairman said last November that encrypting everything could end government censorship in a decade. Now Schmidt says that in that same decade, encryption could open up countries with strict censorship laws, giving their people a voice. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Schmidt said that Google was attempting to strengthen its encryption so the worlds governments wont be able to penetrate it and obtain private data. Those efforts, Schmidt said, would create particular problems for governments like Chinas, which he thought responsible for 80 to 85 percent of the worlds industrial espionage. The Google chairman also said he saw the eventual relaxation of Chinese censorship over time as the number of people using social media in the country continued to grow.