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?"

Stuff That Doesn't Work

[nuintari]

I can assure, anything you saw in enemy of the state is pure bullshit. sweeping the room with an AM radio,while switching channels.... hello? other frequency ranges? Sticking strange decies in your spent potatoe chips bags won't do squat either, Mylar is just sooo reflective.

Coat Hangers in the ceiling does nothing, nor does the tinfoil/aluminum foil hat.

Anyone else know any good ones that are just utter bunk?

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!

being better citizens ?

[metalcup]

Pehaphs by being more proactive as citizens, and demanding and electing the right set of people to legislate. This, IMO, whould be a permanent solution - we could keep developing ways of evading 'surveillance', but the the agencies would just develop something better - wouldn't they ? FP, btw :D

Bill of Rights, Crypto Communication Tools

[QuietRiot]

US Bill of Rights [archives.gov]

[ 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/ [sourceforge.net]
Faster than freenet
==> http://www.i2p.net/ [i2p.net]
Encrypt Jabber
==> http://www.vanemery.com/Linux/Jabber/jabberd.html [vanemery.com]
Onion Routing
==> http://tor.eff.org/ [eff.org]
Emerging Network To Reduce Orwellian Potency Yield
==> http://entropy.stop1984.com/ [stop1984.com]
Free Internet telephony
==> http://skype.com/ [skype.com]
GNU-ified P2p
==> http://www.gnu.org/software/gnunet/ [gnu.org]


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

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

!!! 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 [e-mail]

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


$ gpg --export --armor [e-mail] > 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

Re:Move to Canada.

[Clover_Kicker]

> For goodness sake, they don't even have a Constitution!

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/const/ [justice.gc.ca]

Re: How about do nothing wrong?

[Paul Jakma]

He wasn't chased at all. De Menezes *walked* through the station, broke into a trot on the platform to get into the train and then sat down. Next thing he knows a man who had accompanied him onto the train (a police officer, but Charles couldn't have known that because at no point did they identify themselves to him. Also at least 2 other surveillance officers were on the train with him) physically restrains him and pins him down into his seat, while two or more special ops police officers (or possibly soldiers..) come running along and then shoot him *eleven* times, no questions asked, over a 30 second period.

Course, he lived in the same building and had vaguely the same skin colour as a suspected terrorist, and he went from that building to a tube station, so you can't really blame the police.

The man reported by witnesses as running through Stockport station and jumping over the barrier was not Charles but one of the police officers (or SAS squaddies possibly, we don't know yet - MoD confirms military were involved, though they deny they were directly involved) running to go execute Charles.

Revolutions without tyrants

[Phronesis]

A few examples of successful revolutions after France, which produced neither reigns of terror nor Napoleons in their wake:

Gandhi's revolution in India, Solidarity's revolution in Poland, the real Irish Revolution (the one that liberated Southern Ireland, not the terrorism in the North masquerading as a republican war of independence), Chile's revolution against colonialism in 1810-2.

One could also point to the Mexican revolution, but that was much more complicated and bloody although I would still argue that its outcome was better (if only marginally) than the antecedant conditions.