Keeping Your Data Private From the NSA (And Everyone Else)

Nerval's Lobster writes "If those newspaper reports are accurate, the NSA's surveillance programs are enormous and sophisticated, and rely on the latest in analytics software. In the face of that, is there any way to keep your communications truly private? Or should you resign yourself to saying or typing, 'Hi, NSA!' every time you make a phone call or send an email? Fortunately there are ways to gain a measure of security: HTTPS, Tor, SCP, SFTP, and the vendors who build software on top of those protocols. But those host-proof solutions offer security in exchange for some measure of inconvenience. If you lose your access credentials, you're likely toast: few highly secure services include a 'Forgot Your Password?' link, which can be easily engineered to reset a password and username without the account owner's knowledge. And while 'big' providers like Google provide some degree of encryption, they may give up user data in response to a court order. Also, all the privacy software in the world also can't prevent the NSA (or other entities) from capturing metadata and other information. What do you think is the best way to keep your data locked down? Or do you think it's all a lost cause?"

Comments

Run your own servers and use encryption

[kullnd]

Only way you can keep your data yours while sitting at rest is to have it on your own servers and utilize proper encryption and security on those servers. That means don't use "cloud" anything unless it's on equipment you own, run your own email servers, etc. Remember that even doing this, emails that you send to other people can be accessed through whatever servers they use.

Security through obscurity

[Synerg1y]

1. Use an email provider nobody's heard about.
2. Keep social network data private, more importantly don't post anything sensitive.
3. Don't engage in terrorism, they really hate that.
4. Somewhere between "get off Windows" and use a live disk, I don't think any OS is truly secure.
5. Don't save anything locally, keep your accounts hidden, no email notifications.

Wave at the black SUV outside your window as not having any traceable data may warrant suspicion in itself.

Move to SA (either one).

Re: Can't have it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, privacy isn't mentioned in the Bill of Rights at all. It has been inferred though not explicitly mentioned.

Re:Why the hell are people accepting this?

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

According to wikipedia, in 2001 a total of 3547 people died in terrorist attacks. Worst year on record.
According to wikipedia, in 2001 in the US 42,196 people died in traffic accidents.
According to Wikipedia in 2001 (A crappy graph) approximately 8000 people were killed with handguns in the US.

Someone tell me why the threat of terrorism gets so much attention.