Defending Against Surveillance? 157
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?"
No Electronics (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Stuff That Doesn't Work (Score:2, Interesting)
So if you can convince large numbers of people, if possible a majority, to continually perform acts which might flag systems like Echelon, eg. by continually generating and sending emails containing keywords like "bomb" and "kill the president" and things like that, you will render their effectiveness null.
Re:How about do nothing wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)
Arrests under anti-terror legislation since 11 September 2001: 10,000s.
Convictions under anti-terror legislation since 11 September 2001: 10s.
Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this picture?
Re:Vote (Score:3, Interesting)
I think I can generalise that a lot of people don't trust the electoral process anymore. And even if the contest is honest, the main political parties seem to act in very similiar ways (probably due to the amount of special interest money floating around).
I am not sure how to reverse this trend of feeling that the government is screwing the electoral process and the people all at the same time. I think it would take electing some pretty impressive politicians, but I suspect that the electoral process also tends to weed out those sort of people.
Cynical, yes. But I think this is a serious problem - How do you get people involved if they feel no connection between what they do and what the government does.
NOTE that I am not pinning this on republicans or democrats, but rather the process in general.
Re:Ballot boxes, envelopes, and postage (Score:3, Interesting)
Run against them, or support someone to run against them.
* - Our voting machines are rigged and we're unable to vote them out of office.
File suit in federal district court. Election fraud causing more than the margin of error of a difference is provable in court, and worst comes to worst there's always the option of a recall election.
* - While being monitored, we have no means of collaboration and organization to form a revolution.
Your revolution should START with the collaboration and organization. Our system of government was designed to have bi-annual non-violent revolutions. The Republicans did it, the Civil Rights movement did it, the pro-alcohol lobby did it, and the prohibition movement did it.
* - Were a revolution organized, we have no weapons of any signifigance to mount an effective revolution.
With a just cause and a convincing argument of actual fraud on the part of the elected government, you can expect the United States military to fracture and bring the weapons for you. The oath is "defend the consitution", not "defend the President."
Don't make it easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, help throw up smoke screens. Spare bandwidth can be used to send random garbage - some of it should be truly random so no amount of work will allow someone to conclude that they have successfully decrypted usless data but rather that they still have work to do.
Educate yourself so you know how to protect your rights in the event that you become an unjust target.
Donate to the EFF, ACLU or other rights-defender of your choice.
Write your legislators, support those who will defend your freedoms, fight those who don't, and vote.
And remember to separate the people, the goals and the techniques. There really are "bad guys" out there and we have many smart and dedicated people defending us against them. Help them where you can. But remember that they are all sworn to defend the Constitution (here in the U.S.) and it's up to us to make sure they remember and abide by that pledge. The ends do not always justify the means.
Let's give 'em something to talk about...... (Score:5, Interesting)
Poison their databases.
Plan and publicize, but don't hold, activities which fall under their "threat" category but aren't actually threatening, ie. protests at military related sites.
Call a flash mob that happens to be at such a place, but don't let that fact on when calling it.
Make sure to be at grandma's for Sunday dinner when such things do or do not occur.
Put up a web site for a bogus anti-something organization and encrypt the hell out of the pages, those being fair use snippets out of "Cryptonomicon" or some such.
There's far more potential spookees than spooks.
Re:Stuff That Doesn't Work (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, this used to work with early miniature transmitters. In an effort to keep them small, very little attention was paid to what undesirable RF was being thrown off by the device.
Try again (Score:3, Interesting)
No. Because if there were, or were actually used on a mass scale, they would be illegal very quickly.
Information overload (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep talking. All the time. Say nothing but gibberish. Overwhelm them with data to the point that they can't cope anymore.
If 20% of a given ISP user's would, everyday, post random gibberish on 10 different USENET groups, this would be a good start. Let those fuckers wonder what the hell we're talking about.
Let them outlaw encryption. Let them sue everybody.
"The best way to force a redesign is to throw a monkey wrench in the works".
Don't cooperate with the police. Never talk to them. Let them wonder. Let them find out by themselves that you're up to nothing bad. Bog them down. Let them think that EVERY civilian is suspect.
Scramble the cameras (Score:4, Interesting)
Revolutions don't need guns (Score:3, Interesting)
In 1979, largely unarmed civilians overthrew the government of Iran, which boasted the world's sixth largest armed forces and was led by Shah Reza Pahlevi, whose brutality toward dissidents was legend---he was torturing children to make their parents talk long before Saddam Hussein was.
The current regime in Iran is almost as bloodthirsty and evil as the Shah's but my point is not to defend them, just to point out that revolutions don't need weapons if people understand political tactics. Most importantly, if the soldiers and police were to lose faith in the current regime then repression becomes impossible.
We don't have the sort of corrupt and evil government that you hypothesize above, but if we did, the people would not stand for it and would throw them out of power in a heartbeat.
Re:Domestic Spying? Or just being Dumb? (Score:3, Interesting)
Suppose the government captures a terrorist's cell phone addressbook. They then decide they'd like to eavesdrop on everyone in that list, in case some of them are also involved in terrorism. The administration may not be able to convince a FISA judge that simply being in someone's phone list is "probable cause" that the person is themselves a foreign agent or terrorist.
Details on FISA [eff.org]