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EFF Launches Surveillance Self-Defense Site
justin.foell writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created a Surveillance Self-Defense site. Created with the help of the Open Society Institute, the site intends to serve as a how-to guide for protecting your private data against government spying. From their press release, they 'aim to educate Americans about the law and technology of communications surveillance and computer searches and seizures, and to provide the information and tools necessary to keep their private data out of the government's hands.'"
Yup, we website is composed in 144 point font, bright red, and contains just 2 words ...
YOU'RE SCREWED !!!
(Oh, and prosty piss ?)
Then the government will just request the access logs from this site to see who should they spy. :-)
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
I Know You're Listening
Eclipse PDE and Me
On a more serious note, will any accesses to the site be logged by ISPs so they know who to watch?
EFF! That's who.
Nice site, has thorough and accessible explanations of things that the non-geek-yet-somewhat-paranoid digital populace really need to get clued up. The section on FISA, particularly the Beyond FISA page, is a must read. That Fourth Amendment sure was nice while it lasted....
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Then why not move to france?
Weather kinda sucks. Heh, So do you...
digital anal probing never hurt anyone. It's not like the government has any malcontent in mind. The government is for, by, and of the people, so obviously they're going to do what's in our best interest.
Whether it's a prostate exam, a full-body cavity search, or having microwaves banned city-wide because the new mayor has a pacemaker, it's all in our best interest. Yeah, that's it.
Anonmyous Cowards, keeping us angry since 1998. Face up to it, the internet is a public domain and everything you do will be watched by someone
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
I commend the EFF's good efforts and their attempts to protect 'We the people' from, well, other men in the middle. However, as valuable as the information is, it will have little to none tangible benefit. The users reading those pages in the first place are already the one's interested in such technologies, probably already use some of them and are generally not the target group. The big mass of people will never read these pages, nevermind implement the solutions laid out there. Thus they force even the privacy-conscious to remain unsecured in their communications with them, as both sides need certain setup's (encryption etc.).
So the real question is this: How do we not just get a nice write-up about what we *could* do, but how do we get these features activated by default?
For example, AFAIK none of the popular Linux distributions enables IM (OTR) encryption out-of-the-box. Why not?
Why have we still not come up with a way to enable opportunistic encryption for e-mail (think GPG in the background without user intervention), as well enabled by default?
etc.pp..
It is the experience of every geek, that most 'normal' people leave things fairly alone and just try to use them as they come. Since most OS' and program's defaults are insecure, it is, IMHO, one of the primary reasons that everything is so easily monitored, stored and...eventually used against you. .0.0.0.1beta version on the disks, but make a true effort to secure their shipped communication-related programs. If usability-issues exist, they should also be addressed. That, and only that, would make any kind of real-life difference: Make security and privacy the default!
Here the Linux distributions could make a dramatic impact overall and I would welcome something like an official "privacy-year", where the distros focus less on cramming the latest
Awesome, the second link in the blurb uses a cert issued by Comodo. Perfect lesson.
"We don' need no steenkin' access logs!"
Solid-state Drives?
Oh, i see what you are doing EFF, I'M ON TO YOU.
gah, if you have nothing to hide then you shouldnt have any problem with the government seeing what your doing on the internet. The only people who want to hide what their doing are the ones who have something to hide
Very well written concise guide to the basics. I would add a some list type highlights to be kept in the car, near the door or the computer to remind people. The last time I was pulled over I turned on the interior light, rolled down my window and kept both hands on the steering wheel. Yes sir, no sir. No ticket!
On the flipside watch any flavor of "Cops" to see what not to do. "You got any drugs?". "Nah man". "Can I check your car, you're not hiding anything are ya?". "Go ahead." "What's this vial of crack doing in the glove compartment?". "That ain't mine, man!"
-Dumb*ss!
It's a fine site with lots of good information. But it skips some things that people interested in privacy should probably know about. I see no mention on the site of Freenet or the concept of darknets/opennets. The section on disk encryption doesn't mention hardware-based solutions at all, even though they are about the easiest for a non-geek user to implement.
Good start. Keep it up, EFF.
Hey, I thought all the spying on citizens would end once the Bush Administration and their minions of fascism were chucked out of office?
Did I miss a memo from the new bunch, or what?
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
why people talk about privacy in relation to anything that happens on the internet
i'm not talking about government policy, i'm talking philosophical reality
if you put something on a wire, beyond your control, its no longer private. beginning and ending of discussion
but since most of what gets put on the net is willingly understood by most people as not private, since it just is detritus of their lives, not vital life-altering information, this is not a big deal
if you want privacy, take an airplane, and take a walk on a beach with the other person so the crashing surf drowns out the conversation beyond 2 meters
anything else, especially on the internet, can be spied on, and not just by the government. if you bound the government to draconian privacy laws in 72 bold font written in the blood of a virgin, they would still spy if they thought it important enough, and we aren't even beginning to examine other culprits: IT personnel, hackers, cable/ phone infrastructure employees, competing business interests, random busybodies, etc
and guess what? this arrangement is perfectly fine for all non paranoid schizophrenics, since most of what is put on the internet can be easily compromised without compromising your life
that's the real issue with privacy on the internet: give it up when you hit click
once you put it on a wire, its beyond your control, and beyond the philosphical realm of privacy
why does the concept of privacy even figure in with that arrangement in some people's minds?
you are communicating, across the wires of a corporate interest, across international boundaries often, with governments keen to mine data, usually involving destinations who want to sell you advertising via profiling, which you found with a search engine which keeps tabs on you...
abnd you want to talk about even the possibility of privacy in this realm?
really?
why isn't it just understood that privacy is forfeit on the internet?
and this is FINE. if its really important to you, KEEP IT OFF THE NET. there: a surefire personal privacy policy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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Fatal error: Unknown: Failed opening required '/www/ssd.eff.org/docs/index.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/share/pear') in Unknown on line 0
Black helicopters are hovering over the EFF compund even now...
Angry!? Who the fuck is angry?? What the hell is the matter with you? We were only...ACTING!
Genius!
there are researchers talking about snooping on and decoding supposedly foolproof communications
anything that can be made a man, can be broken by a man. don't forget that. your hubris is outstanding
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Hardware encryption may be the easiest to use, but on more than one occasion a hard drive labeling itself as "secure", or even specifically saying that it uses AES, has been found to merely be XOR'ing with a fixed key.
It's better to leave real encryption to a source that can be trusted: one that lets you audit the code, which manufacturers are loath to do.
there is tension between naturally laziness and the exertion required to keep data relatively private. such that people are always screwing up and letting things slip. such that you wind up accepting that you cannot have absolute privacy, because you yourself are not willing to exert oneself enough to have that
within those realizations, you figure that all external factors on the issue of your privacy and how you manage your privacy are completely beyond the scope of any valid discussion of the topic: the entirety of the topic is put forth and resolved within the realm of the self. it has nothing to do with government snooping. it has to do entirely with: how much effort are you willing to exert to keep things private? if you want, the government will never see anything about you. but no one is willing to go through that effort, because essentially, not much of your life is that vital to be so private
and besides, there is this entirely absurd notion that people somehow expect a GOVERNMENT POLICY to maintian their privacy. huh? the only entity in this world that guarantee your privacy is YOU. shoving that job out to the government is so logically contradictory to describe it as absurd is mild. a more accurate description of expecting the government to maintain your privacy is: its stupid. yet here you find a bunch of chattering buffoons expecting exactly that: "the government should have laws protecting my privacy"
wtf?!
"i will trust to that which can only destroy my privacy the job of maintaining my privacy"
my head asplode. does not compute
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
-1, Flaimbait by some dumbshit who lacks foresight.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1149507&cid=27074505
The point is about RAGE. PURE, UNADULTERATED.... RAGE that illigetimate spying on people.
Talking about booby-trapping and setting up backdoor detection is about expression of RAGE. Anyone who takes a cursory glance at random samplings of my posts can see that i am reasonably intelligent enough to not ACTUALLY SET an illegal boobytrap of the explosive, burning, dismembering or similar kind.
Now, we have the EFF releasing a tool to do the LEGAL side in work, deed, expression and act.
But, instead, people see only the dangerous side of my expression, not the symptom or cause of WHY i tend to express this way. SOMEtimes raw, sharp, vicious speech serves a purpose without carrying into act. This serves to prompt others to find the safer, more acceptable alternative. EFF may have been for a long time working on this. It's just coincidental that my anger is expressed a day before we hear they released a(nother) tool users can hopefully count on.
As for kicking ass of an intruder, there are few reasons for anyone to be **IN** a home that is not theirs: guest or intruder. Intruder includes drunkards, or ANYONE entering the domicile even in good faith. Once their mistake has been made clear, they need to clear out, even if they think they have power to just stick around and turn the place upside down just showing that THEY are in command, not the tenant.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
at first i thought the title said, "EFF Launches Surveillance Self-Defense Satellite", and i said, Cool those little bastards are gonna get whats coming to them. but no, it is a "Self-Defense Site", ok i can deal with that, its nice to know that the contributions that i have made over the years are going for rail gun rights. now i can look froward to a nice Phased-plasma rifle in the forty watt range. hmmm.... nope, nothing like that there.... and i did not find any mention of putting any of the people who allowed the data breach, did the breaching, or profited by the act ,into a game of "tay-zer tag"
( http://a.parsons.edu/~randy/tag/ )
what kind of lame "Self-Defense Site" is this?
"What people want laws for is so that private institutions (banks, especially) can be punished for letting customers' private information out."
if someone else, anyone else, has information about you, it isn't private information anymore, is it?
you've moved the goalpost, redefined the term
what you've described above isn't the notion of privacy at all
not that i think there should be no laws. just that people should understand those laws provide you no real protection, in regard to what you actually consider to be your PRIVATE information, as opposed to your CONFIDENTIAL information with another party
what you decide is private, and what isn't, is completely decided by you, no bank or government organzation decides that
and when you put it out there, you've just relinquished your privacy
simple as that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
yes ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I meant FP was insightful, but also applies to GP.