Posted on 05/12/2009 7:47:14 AM PDT by Sinschild
Most of us are aware that our governments monitor nearly every form of electronic communication. We are also aware of private companies doing the same. This strikes most of us as slightly troubling, but very few of us say or do much about it. There are two primary reasons for this: 1. We really don’t see how it is going to hurt us. Mass surveillance is certainly a new, odd, and perhaps an ominous thing, but we just don’t see a complete picture or a smoking gun. 2. We are constantly surrounded with messages that say, “Only crazy people complain about the government.” However, the biggest obstacle to our understanding is this: The usual image of a “police state” includes secret police dragging people out of their homes at night, with scenes out of Nazi Germany or Stalin’s USSR. The problem with these images is that they are horribly outdated. That’s how things worked during your grandfather’s war – that is not how things work now. An electronic police state is quiet, even unseen. All of its legal actions are supported by abundant evidence. It looks pristine.
(Excerpt) Read more at secure.cryptohippie.com ...
What was the Star Trek episode in which the two planets fought war by computers ,and the casualties reported to the disintegration booths for processing?All nice and tidy.
Based on my very limited knowledge of the subject these days, you can be assured that every message which you send is stored and analyzed for content (using advanced AI techniques). Amazingly enough even though it is done for terrorism suspects, money transfers, and something as trivial as the amount of sugar which you buy is monitored (and who knows what else).
So don’t send anything in the open, which you don’t want someone to throw back at you sometime.
Crap. now I am on some list for reading that article.
“Star Trek” A Taste of Armageddon (1967)
Pretty much my views on it. Older versions of PGP can be had for free, and the open source versions are very secure as well.
If someone wants it badly enough, they will get it, but encryption is very much your friend in this day and age.
Is there a free ware Windows front end for PGP? The one that PGP Corp offered for single use is no longer available as it times out after a 30 day trial.
I’d like one that works with WinXP/Vista/Win7 if possible. I don’t do command line very well.
All I’d like to do is generate a key, PGP some text files, zips. some other files that then could be emailed as an attachment and decrypt files sent to me as attachments, not a whole suite of features.
As far as governments intercepting everything, it’s sort of a given now. Private people just have to stay under the radar if they don’t want to get looked at. Don’t be intemperate when ranting against your masters in Washington DC, don’t use words in email that trigger the snoop filters like “bomb” or “Christian conservative”.
All of the options above are open source, cost nothing, and provided a very high level of privacy if you use a strong passphrase and keep it secure. I recommend using the method at Diceware (http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html). It is a small outlay to buy a few sets of dice, but the passphrases contain high entropy and are very secure, yet easy to remember.
As far as the testing, if you just need a key to encrypt to, I can upload one either to one of my webs or here so you can practice.
“When robbery is done in open daylight by sanction of the law, as it is done today, then any act of honor or restitution has to be hidden underground.”
Ragnar Danneskjold [from Atlas Shrugged]
Again, these programs will cost you *nothing* but a bit of your time, and they yield an immense advantage.
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