Edward Snowden continues to make headlines as the NSA has now announced that his infamous whistleblowing incident has, as U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper put it in a press conference this past Monday “As a result of the Snowden revelations, the onset of commercial encryption has accelerated by seven years. The projected growth maturation and installation of commercially available encryption—what [the NSA] had forecasted for seven years ahead, three years ago, was accelerated to now, because of the revelation of the leaks.”
The belief is that due to the leaks many big technology companies, namely Facebook, Google, and Apple, have stronger encryption on their products such as Facebook’s new messaging app designed for “end-to-end encryption” to protect users from cyber criminals, hackers, and “oppressive regimes.” However, Clapper is convinced that no such thing as unbreakable encryption exists, as technology will always continue to advance and improve upon itself.The fact that encryption has become more difficult to access from the outside has only been reinforced with the San Bernardino case. Though Clapper believes that the advancements impede the NSA’s ability the collect data on terrorists, Snowden recently tweeted that “Of all the things I’ve been accused of, this is the one of which I’m most proud.”