Safeguarding Data From Big Brother Sven?

An anonymous reader writes "Now that the Swedish government (in its infinite wisdom) has passed a law allowing them to monitor email traffic, a question that I think a lot of people are asking (or at least should be asking) is: 'What can I do to improve my privacy?' The answer is not obvious. So, what are the best solutions for seamless email encryption, search privacy, etc? What are your experiences with PGP vs GPG vs ...? In this day and age, why is the use of this type of privacy technologies still so limited? Why isn't there a larger movement promoting the use of privacy tools? Also, what is in your opinion the largest privacy concern? Search tracking? Email transfer? I believe this is an interesting question not only for Swedes, but for everyone. Lots of traffic is passing through Sweden, but more importantly, the Swedish government is not alone in using this type of surveillance." Reader j1976 writes with a related question: "For most users with email addresses within large organizations, implementing their own email encryption scheme is not feasible, partly because of the technological aspects, but also since users in organizations often do not have administrative access to their workstations. What can an organization do, centrally, to lift the burden of encryption from the users? Are there any transparent schemes for email encryption which could be installed for the organization as a whole?"

Comments

Re:Here is what you do

[Hyppy]

Am I missing something? What significance does the number 17 hold?

Privacy Ruling today in U.S.

[crazytisay]

EFF running story on 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that email and text messages should be considered private, subscribers cannot get the ISPs to release without user consent or a warrant. At least in the U.S. email at work, as long as its 3rd party, cannot be released to your boss. Not entirely on point, but as far as privacy is concerned, this is at least a step in the right direction. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/06/new-ninth-circuit-case-protects-text-message-priva

sleep? sleep is good.

[Magdalene]

I know I have been awake WAY too long when:

An anonymous reader writes "Now that the Swedish government (in its infinite wisdom) has passed a law allowing them to monitor email traffic, a question that I think a lot of people are asking (or at least should be asking) is: 'What can I do to improve my privacy?' The answer is not obvious. So, what are the best solutions for seamless email encryption, search privacy, etc? What are your experiences with PGP vs GPG vs ...? In this day and age, why is the use of this type of privacy technologies still so limited? Why isn't there a larger movement promoting the use of privacy tools? Also, what is in your opinion the largest privacy concern? Search tracking? Email transfer? I believe this is an interesting question not only for Swedes, but for everyone. Lots of traffic is passing through Sweden, but more importantly, the Swedish government is not alone in using this type of surveillance."

In the *insanely surreal* topic I have been reading about, where even I have been having trouble believing those whacky, *fun-loving* Swedes admiting to _this_ level of 'open society'. It still takes me until the first ad break to realise that I have been reading Privacy with a dislexic "RI" and without the "V".