The news that the NSA used various methods to weaken cryptographic algorithms and protocols has caused more of a shock than I would have thought. It's been widely believed that the NSA had already broken some methods of encryption (whether a specific kind or in the right circumstances) through discovering flaws, new math, or computation power. But I suppose the intentional insertion of weakness as well as working with some companies to install backdoors or flaws is what stuns. By making supposedly secure methods weaker, the NSA endangers us all, including America's personal, corporate, and government interests. But there's one thing you can do about secure Web connections.

Bruce Schneier, who has seen the Snowden-provided documents on which the ProPublica/Guardian/New York Times report was based, has a set of recommendations for what security methods to employ. He skips one nascent effort, though, that's easy for non-technical users to