Really, I love hate-mail. Emails like this one help set me straight:
Agent 0 or whatever your called. You guys crack me up. How can you be so paranoid. Geroge W bush is a great president and its the democrat congress thats f****** everything up, how obvious.
…
If you havent done anything wrong than you dont have to worry about anything. Why would the government listen in on your phone calls if your not doing anything wrong. And besides the wire taping is all done to overseas calls anyway. Their trying to capture Al Keida not ordinary Americans. Dont be such a buttmunch.
-Kyptonic77 a LOYAL american
Yeah.
I wonder if our loyal Republican/Neocon reader keeps up with the news. I wonder if he’s heard Mark Klein’s testimony about the NSA and how they’re spying on all Americans. Klein — who’s a former AT&T network technician, now retired — was a first-hand observer as the NSA set up wire-tapping equipment not for phone calls but for internet traffic.
“They’re copying the whole Internet. There’s no selection going on here. Maybe they select out later, but at the point of handoff to the government, they get everything,” Klein told the Washington Post. He means that every single message from every single ISP in the U.S. is being examined by NSA software.
Big Brother is reading your email. He’s watching what you’re browsing on the web. Maybe his intentions are good, maybe they’re not; we cannot know. We do know this violates every privacy law known to man, as well as the Constitution:
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.
Don’t try and tell me that somehow doesn’t include the internet. Certainly this prevents government agents from reading your paper mail without established probable cause. “Papers and effects” means our communication. And right now, we’re not very secure in that. (If you’re reading this, and you’re an NSA spy: go to hell.)
What can you do to keep the government out of your email?
Despite what our dear reader says above, you shouldn’t have to worry about whether what you say in an email or on a web site captures the interest of the NSA. You shouldn’t have to worry about the government at all? (Should the government fear us, the people, rather than the other way around?)
Here are some basic ways you can make it less likely that a government spook is sniffing around your inbox:
- encrypt your web email reader with SSL. If you use a webmail reader, like Gmail (from Google), to read your email online, then the government can see what you see — unless you encrypt it. As far as I know, only Gmail offers SSL browser encryption so that what you see while you’re reading your mail is for your eyes only. The catch: it’s not automatic. Point your browser to https://mail.google.com rather than the straight http:// prefix. Gmail is free.
- keep mail transmissions off the general internet. The problem with Gmail, even with SSL turned on, is that when you click Send, your message goes to your recipient in the clear. This is a hard problem to solve. One of the easiest solutions: have all your mail recipients use the same service you are. If all your friends are also on Gmail, then your message will never need to hit the internet; it’ll stay within Google’s server farm. As long as you trust Google, you’re OK. Some are suspicious of Google, and you can never be 100% sure, but the company has a pretty good track record of giving the Bush spies the middle finger.
- keep your mail totally encrypted. This is the most secure way you can send your email, but it’s also the most involved. You can use free software to completely encrypt your mail using technology so sophisticated that not even the NSA can decrypt it (really!). If you use the Firefox web browser (highly recommended), you can get a free add-on called FireGPG that will do exactly that in concert with Gmail. All the government will know is what address you’re sending to; your message stays hidden and uncrackable.
There are certainly other ways to protect your email. But be cautious. One well-known email privacy service, Hushmail, was recently caught handing over their customers’ emails to — guess who — a government spy organization. (And really, what government organization isn’t a spy organization? God knows what the Department of Education has on me.)
What can you do to keep the government from spying on your internet activity?
If you don’t want the government to see what you’re doing at all, you have some options, too. Here’s a smattering:
- hide your web browsing activity with a free anonymous proxy. You configure your web browser to use a special internet site as a “proxy” server, and that server will fetch web sites for you. The result: web sites can’t tell where you’re coming from, and neither can anyone spying on them. The danger: free anonymous proxies abound on the internet for a reason. Since they see everything you’re doing, their owners can steal any information they come across — logins and passwords, bank account data, what-have-you.
- hide your web browsing activity with a “legitimate” anonymous proxy. The best-known non-free service is Anonymizer. These services do the same thing as their free brethren, but with a legit company behind it, you probably have less to worry about. The problem with all anonymous proxies is that if the NSA is spying on all internet traffic, then they’re probably watching your communication with Anonymizer — which isn’t encrypted. Oops.
- hide all your internet activity with Tor. Tor is a free service that uses free software, sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Ironically started as a US government project, Tor scatters your internet traffic, rendering your web surfing anonymous. Problem is, it’s not easy for the average user of the Interwebs to set up. And, Tor can be quite slow.
- hide all your internet activity with Relakks. This service, relatively new, is intriguing: all your internet activity is sent encrypted to Relakks’ servers in Sweden. Relakks then routes your requests and voila, you’re anonymous and all but untraceable. Service costs 5 euros a month. Problems? Well, this isn’t an American company, and Relakks is all about hiding people’s activity, so it’s probably safe. But it hasn’t been forced to prove itself yet, and if Sweden gets enough pressure from the American government … well, there are no guarantees in life (except for death, and government corruption).
Here are some other tips if you’re interested in securing yourself against government intrusion:
- use non-American anti-spyware software to detect and defeat government keyloggers. The US government has a habit of infecting computers with spyware that logs your every keystroke. The most infamous keylogger was Magic Lantern, but other agencies have contracted to make newer, more insidious software. Sure your anti-virus software will stop it? Don’t be. American software companies are probably complying secretly with the government’s demand to “ignore” their spyware. Safest bet? Kaspersky, a top-notch Russian anti-spyware, anti-virus outfit, couldn’t give a crap about what the US government wants.
- explore the spy-free world of Freenet. A freedom-loving geek’s utopia, Freenet is a way to distribute information — thoughts, files, whatever — with no centralized server. It was designed to provide anonymity and privacy: sort of vigilante-meets-the-nerd-world. Yes, it’s techie and not for the casual web browsing home user. But it’s probably your best bet to keep prying eyes away from your damned computer.
Tags for this post: anonymizer, bush administration, Conspiracy, email, fourth amendment, freenet, gpg, gwb, kaspersky, keylogger, magic lantern, nsa, pgp, spies, spying, spyware, tor, vpn wiretap
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January 16th, 2008 at 9:25 am |
Well, it’s not like we have a constitution anymore anyways right? Slowly dying away and the citizens don’t believe it. It surprises me how many people I know just have full trust in out government. Saying things like “ohhh they would never do that”… Hitler did it.. Any similarities with the U.S. now???
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:50 am |
Here is a Commercial Keylogger Site:
http://www.relytec.com
November 17th, 2008 at 8:21 pm |
It is not physically possible for all the FBI agents in the US to read all of the billions of emails that are sent every day, and STILL get their doughnuts.
Any software would scan for keywords, and even that would take forever. They won’t have computers powerful enough.
Relax, and send an email to your girlfriend telling her what you will do with her next time she visits!