Encryption protects against a compromise of the backend. This lets 37signals, for example, store user data on S3 without leaking the user's information outside of the organization.
The overhead of decrypting an image is minimal compared to the latency introduced by a network fetch and by handling the rest of the request cycle in Ruby.
(And FWIW, people don't often have access to production encryption keys like this. Privacy is a big deal.)
The overhead of decrypting an image is minimal compared to the latency introduced by a network fetch and by handling the rest of the request cycle in Ruby.
(And FWIW, people don't often have access to production encryption keys like this. Privacy is a big deal.)