Certainly the Chinese situation is different from Skype elsewhere. But the company’s record — and eBay’s well-known willingness to do pretty much anything a law enforcement person asks — gives me no reason whatever to trust Skype.

If there’s a backdoor, as I believe there must be given the company’s non-denial denials, then we have two problems. First, while I trust that almost all law enforcement people are honorable and not prying unreasonably into people’s affairs, I don’t trust that all of them behave that way. The record of abuses where there’s no oversight — and today there’s almost no oversight — is completely clear. Second, if there’s a backdoor for law enforcement, the really bad guys will find it and use it. That means criminals will have access to our communications, too.

As I said, Skype is probably better than nothing, but I still don’t know how much better. But anyone who trusts this software to be protecting conversations that need to be private is foolish.

Josh Silverman, Skype’s President, has blogged about the situation, explaining where we stand and what we’re doing to sort things out.