Via BoingBoing, from Wired:
The bill, known as the Protect America Act, removes the prohibition on warrantless spying on Americans abroad and gives the government wide powers to order communication service providers such as cell phone companies and ISPs to make their networks available to government eavesdroppers. (…)
E-mail is plain-text. Currently, I even outsource my email to Google, a company that specializes in search. While I’m not (hugely) paranoid, I don’t believe the government has the right to read my mail. Or listen to my phone conversations. Not without due process, anyway.
I have a growing list of possible projects that students might be interested in working on next year. An easy-to-use, end-to-end secure, open platform for messaging is one of them. PGP with email doesn’t really cut it, sadly; I need a solution that my mother can use without realizing she is communicating with me using military-grade encryption.) I think a good plan with a good group of students should easily get in the door for a Y Combinator summer internship or similar.