Defending Against Surveillance?

Extrudedaluminiu asks: "With the recent news about domestic spying by the NSA, American citizens are put in a very difficult situation. Citizens in other countries, around the globe, also find themselves in situations where their lives can be examined by government agencies or other groups of questionable ethics. What can people in this kind of world do to defend themselves? Are there any approaches to thwarting or mitigating surveillance that will work on a mass scale? What technologies can people use to hold on to their freedoms, in a difficult world?"

Comments

Ballot boxes, envelopes, and postage

[Pyromage]

For Gods sake people, what's wrong with you?! Write your Senators & Reps, and if they don't do anything, then vote these assholes out of office when the elections come! Donate money to the ACLU.

Seriously people, technologies won't help you hold on to your freedoms. There's no silver bullet. You have to do it for yourselves!

Bill of Rights, Crypto Communication Tools

[QuietRiot]

US Bill of Rights

[ Amendment IV ]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Want to read my stuff? Go ahead and crack it - no warrant necessary.

Get the rabbit installed on a machine behind your firewall
==> http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
Faster than freenet
==> http://www.i2p.net/
Encrypt Jabber
==> http://www.vanemery.com/Linux/Jabber/jabberd.html
Onion Routing
==> http://tor.eff.org/
Emerging Network To Reduce Orwellian Potency Yield
==> http://entropy.stop1984.com/
Free Internet telephony
==> http://skype.com/
GNU-ified P2p
==> http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/


DO NOT DENY yourself about 2 hours @ InfoAnarchy.org
OMG! ==> http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Pag e
LearnLearnLearnLearn ==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography

=================EMAIL ENCRYPTION===============
GPG (Free PGP)
==> http://gnupg.org/
Integrated with Thunderbird
==> http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
Mutt can't be beat as a mailreader and integrates GPG wonderfully.
==> http://mutt.blackfish.org.uk/
==> http://www.mutt.org/links.html
==> http://wiki.mutt.org/index.cgi?UserPages

!!! Please do not immediately send newly created keys to the keyservers (as many HOWTOs instruct new users to). They are already overflowing with "test keys" and other people's experiments from over the years THAT HAVE NO EXPIRATION and will never be deleted. These keys are "orphans" and most will never be used. As keyservers sync together, and most keys are never deleted once submitted - GET YOUR KEY SETUP CORRECTLY AND HAVE PRACTICE WITH IT BEFORE SENDING IT OFF TO THE KEYSERVERS!!! Otherwise storage requirements will continue to grow and using these in the future will become more difficult FOR ALL. Please, if you are just starting out with PGP or GPG or GnuPG or anything similar (the last two are in fact the same thing) use manual key distribution to begin (ascii armor your public key with


$ gpg --export --armor my@email.address.org

and copy and paste it into an email body or attach it to an email


$ gpg --export --armor my@email.address.org > myPubKey.txt

to gain practice with GPG before uploading your key. This way if you need to create another you won't have uploaded your mistakes. Many choices need to be made and it's worth getting things right before "going public" with your new digital ID. Experiment with yourself and a few different email accounts or with some friends first.)

SET AN EXPIRATION OF 2-5 YEARS OR SO AND MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR PREFERENCES THE WAY YOU LIKE THEM BEFORE SENDING TO A KEYSERVER! Better yet is to HOST YOUR