Talking Schmidt: “We can end government censorship in a decade”

In our perpetually continuing series fondly known as Talking Schmidt, we catch up with the Google Chairman and mouthpiece in mid-speech in Washington courtesy of Bloomberg:

Schmidt described the coming of a “network age” in which Internet users communicate and organize socially through private channels shielded by encryption, which scrambles data with a mathematical formula that can be decoded only with a special digital key.

“We can end government censorship in a decade,” Schmidt said during a speech in Washington. “The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything.”

ENCRYPT. EVERYTHING. REALLY?!

My first guess is that this technology exists in 2013. What’s so special about 2023? The issue is less that with the technologies and much, much more with the relationships between governments and the companies providing our services.

Schmidt goes on to discuss future technologies with improved encryption in mind as well as namedropping the NSA:

“First they try to block you, then they try to infiltrate you, then you win,” he said. “The power is shifting.”

Governments will try to conduct surveillance on their populations and there is evidence that some encryption standards in use today have been broken by the NSA and other countries, Schmidt said.

“It’s always a cat-and-mouse game,” he said. “In that race, I think the censors will lose and I think the people will be empowered.”

You can read the full writeup from Bloomberg and be sure to catch up on the latest Talking Schmidt.