Encryption Bans . . . What Is This, Russia?
My company is on the front lines of the battle for online privacy. On Wednesday the Russian government blocked Skiff, a private email service I built with my co-founder Jason Ginsberg, because our product allowed ordinary people to express themselves freely online. Skiff has since seen an 81% drop in traffic from Russia, and our engineers are scrambling to find ways to restore access to those who rely on us to keep their emails private.
This type of behavior is not surprising from authoritarian regimes. But what we at Skiff worry about most is not despots tightening their grip on the internet in their countries. We worry that the U.S., European Union and Australia—all of which claim to protect privacy and free expression—are trying to do the same thing.
