By Matt Klinger
In response to concerns about government surveillance, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
which develops technical standards for the internet, is working
on a plan to expand the use of encryption on the web. Most web
traffic today is exchanged under the hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP), an
unencrypted medium. Some sites, however, like banks, online retailers,
and Gmail, use HTTPS, which incorporates encryption into the exchange.
The IETF hopes to produce a standard by the end of 2014 that encourages
the use of HTTPS for all web traffic, although adoption by websites would not
be mandatory.
Salon
reports the IETF is also looking into make anonymous surfing of the web
easier by expanding the use of Tor - a
networking software that anonymizes web traffic. Journalists, activists,
and others across the globe use Tor to
protect their communications. Meanwhile, the U.S. National Security
Agency and its British counterpart seem intent
on cracking the software. Ironically, Tor's precursors were
developed by the U.S. Department of Defense to safeguard its communications and
the U.S. government reportedly still funds
around 60 percent of Tor's development tab.
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