Re: Secure channels inside secure channels
The GEA/x encryption is between phone and service provider.
If government agencies want your data, they can go to the service provider and get it after it has been decrypted. Therefore, GEA is intended to guard against 'other' agencies (foreign, probably) snooping.
Whatever the case, you should be using your own secure channel on top of whatever your service provider supplies.
Same goes for all the VPN services that are popular now: they're guarding against an untrusted local ISP, but the data is still unprotected when it leaves the VPN provider.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
