Google CEO Schmidt: Encryption is solution for government surveillance

Encrypting all communications is the solution to government surveillance. That’s according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In the near future, internet users will increasingly communicate via encrypted connections, thinks the Google CEO.

Schmidt believes that encryption will eventually make the public win out over governments in the control-versus-privacy race, he said during a talk about Bloomberg message. “The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything,” said Schmidt, who also admits there is evidence that the NSA and other countries’ intelligence agencies have tried to build backdoors into encryption standards.

Schmidt also states that Google has tightened the security of its systems after the revelations about the NSA. Google is already encrypting communications between servers on its internal network. It recently emerged that this communication would have been tapped by the intelligence services.

Schmidt is not known for his privacy-friendly statements. In 2009, when he was CEO of Google in addition to chairman, he said that “if you did something you didn’t want anyone to know about, maybe you shouldn’t have done it.” Those statements caused quite a stir.