How To Make Sure The NSA Can't Read Your Email

[ka9yhd]

They told us about encryption for email a number of years ago.

"Article 12 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home, or correspondence."
It's that last one that's gotten everyone's attention lately. Just how private is your correspondence online?

Depending on your politics, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is either a vile turncoat or a revered hero, but either way he has advice on how to stay two steps ahead of the NSA."



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-email-encryption-works-against-the-nsa-2013-6

[melodie]

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-email-encryption-works-against-the-nsa-2013-6

The article explains PGP: Pretty Good Privacy. In GNU distributions we have GPG, GNU Privacy Guard.

GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is a GPL Licensed alternative to the PGP suite of cryptographic software. GnuPG is compliant with RFC 4880, which is the current IETF standards track specification of OpenPGP. Current versions of PGP (and Veridis' Filecrypt) are interoperable with GnuPG and other OpenPGP-compliant systems.

GnuPG is a part of the Free Software Foundation's GNU software project, and has received major funding from the German government.[2]

[mimas]

> Using any encryption on your email will draw suspicion on to you from the Government............. What are you hiding?  Even though you are just sending pictures of your cat or a simple email to a friend.

There is one solution: stop to vote for mentally ill people, set them free.

In France, the recueil des lois (sort of log of laws) had 433 pages in 1973. It came to 2 400 pages in 2003 and it counted 3 721 pages in 2004 [1]. Who can possibly think our representatives understand the meaning and the goings of every law they vote for? It's like a whole bunch of nuts sitting in a room, darkening paper sheets and showing them to each other, saying "it makes perfect sense, does it?".

So why this representatives and the government, which is close to representatives, should not sense the "we the people" through their crazy mind and see it like a threat to their duty? Remember, they are the chosen ones.

Do you guys have any place left in your deserts? I need to take a rest and go far away from this society.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_l%C3%A9gislative#France

[djohnston]

In France, the recueil des lois (sort of log of laws) had 433 pages in 1973. It came to 2 400 pages in 2003 and it counted 3 721 pages in 2004 [1]. Who can possibly think our representatives understand the meaning and the goings of every law they vote for?

Unfortunately, it's the same here in the U.S. In early 2010, the Obamacare bill was up for a vote in the House of Representatives. Nancy Pelosi, who was Speaker of the House at the time, said, "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it away from the fog of the controversy." The bill was eventually passed into law, without those voting for the law knowing what was actually in it!

The legislation is the "Affordable Health Care Act", or "ObamaCare". The act will actually increase health care premiums substantially. Having health insurance will be mandatory, not voluntary. Those who have no insurance will be subject to ever increasing fines. Employers will be required to provide health insurance for all full time employees. Under the bill, "full time" is just 30 hours a week. As a result, U.S. employers are firing many full time employees, then rehiring them as part time employees (less than 30 hours a week) to avoid paying the health insurance costs.

There are now so many criminal statutes on the books in the U.S. that the Congressional Research Service told a congressional task force that they simply did not have the manpower and resources required to create a tally of all criminal offenses outlined in the federal criminal code. In the book Three Felonies a Day, the author Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us (in the U.S.), for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior. One can now commit a "criminal act" without intending to or even knowing that the act committed is "criminal".

Do you guys have any place left in your deserts? I need to take a rest and go far away from this society.

Yes, the American West still has large expanses of uninhabited land. I'm afraid you may not find any peace there, though.

[melodie]

Yes, the American West still has large expanses of uninhabited land. I'm afraid you may not find any peace there, though.

I was afraid there might be something of the kind, although it seems even worse than what I could imagine. Isn't the "law" and the ones who raise them what we used to call "gangsters"?

[djohnston]

I was afraid there might be something of the kind, although it seems even worse than what I could imagine. Isn't the "law" and the ones who raise them what we used to call "gangsters"?

Exactly. The roles are now almost reversed. The gangsters now wear suits and ties and have official-sounding titles, such as "Minister of Finance" or "Under Secretary for the Minister of Finance of Wildlife Wetland Habitat". They sport badges and enforce rules and regulations no one ever voted on or for, or sometimes even knew about. The rules and regulations were created by the "Wildlife Wetland Habitat" agency and countless other agencies like it. Government agents cross the line of what's legal and illegal every single day.

Some of these agencies have "special" powers to confiscate everything you own upon mere accusation of a crime. You may be lucky enough to have your day in court, represented by a competent lawyer. But, even if you are also lucky enough to win your case and prove your innocence, good luck getting your confiscated possessions back from the thieving agents.

[djohnston]

Here is yet another example of what is going oh so wrong. Here is the full story from TechDirt.

NSA's Keith Alexander Calls Emergency Private Briefing To Lobby Against Amash Amendment

from the what-are-you-afraid-of? dept

So we were just writing about the details of the amendment from Rep. Justin Amash, which would limit the NSA's ability to twist the language of Section 215 of the Patriot Act to pretend it means it's okay to collect information on every phone call made. If you want to know just how important this is, all you need to know is that NSA boss, General Keith Alexander, wasted no time in scheduling a last-minute emergency briefing for Congress to tell them not to vote for the Amash Amendment.

    NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander scheduled a last-minute, members-only briefing in response to the amendment, according to an invitation distributed to members of Congress this morning and forwarded to HuffPost. "In advance of anticipated action on amendments to the DoD Appropriations bill, Ranking Member C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of the House Intelligence Committee invites your Member to attend a question and answer session with General Keith B. Alexander of the National Security Agency," reads the invitation.

    The invitation warned members that they could not share what they learned with their constituents or others. "The briefing will be held at the Top Secret/SCI level and will be strictly Members-Only," reads the invite.

Of course, the people that Congress is supposed to be representing, the public, don't get the privilege of being able to secure a last minute "briefing" with our elected officials to explain to them why the Amash amendment is important. Instead, we need to rely on things like DefundTheNSA.com or Demand Progress to reach out to our Representatives to let them know that bulk data collection on every American is not acceptable behavior by the NSA.

[patrick013]

As congressional support for Obamacare reaches a low of 47%   the Obama
administration urges strongly not to limit the NSA thru congressional  action.

Not good.    Who are we at war with ?    Who's the good guys  ?

[Slystone]

Telecomix displays loads of information on howto to encrypt and ensure privacy : http://decryptedmatrix.com/live/telecomix-crypto-munitions-bureau/
Otherwise I'm translating a book which is really great for beginners: http://flossmanuals.net/basic-internet-security/. It's very good for your friends.

@ ka9yhd : I think we should encrypt our stuff, even if it's going to draw attention if we have nothing to hide. If everybody does it, those who really need to remain anonymous will have some cover. We need to set an example. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that my government has a folder on my activities in free software, defending Internet liberties, and so on.

And just to say hello : Airbus patent new technology cost-effective.
Ok, this should work.

[djohnston]

There are projects to keep your browsing the Internet private, and keep your email private.

Tor Browser Bundle

https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en

Torchat

https://github.com/prof7bit/TorChat

Bitmessage

https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page

Seahorse

Seahorse is a GNOME application for managing encryption keys and passwords in the GnomeKeyring.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Seahorse
https://projects.gnome.org/seahorse/download.html

A great resource of onging projects across a spectrum of areas is at prism-break

https://prism-break.org/

Telecomix displays loads of information on howto to encrypt and ensure privacy : http://decryptedmatrix.com/live/telecomix-crypto-munitions-bureau/
Otherwise I'm translating a book which is really great for beginners: http://flossmanuals.net/basic-internet-security/. It's very good for your friends.

Keep 'em coming, guys. Good stuff.