lead centered=”no”Spurred by government surveillance of data, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is making progress toward its goal of encrypting all internet traffic using technology and scorecards./lead

If there is one technology that best protects internet users from scammers, hackers and nation-state threat actors it’s encryption. Fortunately, the web is currently undergoing a massive transformation from a non-secure HTTP format, the initial underlying protocol for all communications on the web, to HTTPS, which ensures communications between browsers and websites are secure via encryption.

Few organizations have done more to push encryption technologies onto the internet’s vast jumble of websites than the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “Ten years ago, there was basically no encryption on the web,” Dr. Jeremy Gillula, technical projects director at EFF, said during a talk at Shmoocon.

Internet surveillance spurs encryption efforts

In 2006, a surprise development pushed encryption higher up on EFF’s agenda. On January 26 of that year, former AT&T technician Mark Klein walked into of EFF’s offices, unsolicited, with the astounding story of how the NSA built a secret spying room in AT&T’s San Francisco facility that gave it access to all internet traffic traveling through that, and probably more, AT&T facilities.

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