creative commons licensed (BY) flickr photo by zigazou76
Since the Edward Snowden story hit the news in June of 2013 with information about how the United States government has been conducting mass surveillance on its own citizens I have become much more aware and interested in the topic of privacy.
|
After marching in the Restore the 4th protest rally in NYC, I was beat (left)! It was over 100°, but that didn't stop several hundred protesters from marching from Union Square all the way down to the Federal Building on Wall Street on July 4, 2013. More than 100 rallies happened that weekend across America to protest the NSA surveillance on American Citizens. Buzzfeed has a collection of some of the best signs Restore the Fourth March NYC (video) |
Why does privacy matter so much?
Bruce Schneier, author and leading security expert says this:
"We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need."
He then goes on to say:
How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.
This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives."
"We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need."
He then goes on to say:
How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.
This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives."
The Eternal Value of Privacy; Bruce Schneier, Wired, 5/18/06
This is just the tip of the iceberg, for more about why privacy matters and how it is the cornerstone of democracy, please visit the links below.
How to "Reclaim" Your Privacy Online
The Intercept just published an interview with Edward Snowden with advice on what you can do to make sure your privacy is protected online. Read the entire article here, I've made a 5-step list from recommendations made in the article:
|
Also see the tips and resources for taking control of your data from the Tactical Technical Collaborative
The Five Days of Privacy -- Day 5: Summary and Simple Steps
The Five Days of Privacy -- Day 5: Summary and Simple Steps
What Exactly is Encryption?
How to guide on using Public Key EncryptionThese are a basic instructions on how to protect Source-Journalist communications from being intercepted and read when they transit the internet using a technique called Public Key Encryption (PKE). By following these instructions, you'll allow any potential source in the world to send you a powerfully encrypted message that ONLY YOU can read even if the two of you have never met or exchanged contact information.
We'll be using GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) through the "gpg4win" front-end program and focusing on emails as the transmission medium, but once you've created your ciphertext, you could send it any way you want: email, IM, blog post, Skype, etc. Recommended public keyservers include: pgp.mit.edu keys.gnupg.net sks-keyservers.net |
The History of Encryption (Infographic)
|
And so...
"It's easy to see how encryption protects journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists in authoritarian countries. But encryption protects the rest of us as well. It protects our data from criminals. It protects it from competitors, neighbors, and family members. It protects it from malicious attackers, and it protects it from accidents. ... Encryption should be enabled for everything by default, not a feature you turn on only if you're doing something you consider worth protecting. ... Encryption is the most important privacy-preserving technology we have, and one that is uniquely suited to protect against bulk surveillance — the kind done by governments looking to control their populations and criminals looking for vulnerable victims. By forcing both to target their attacks against individuals, we protect society."
~Schneier via Big Think
Links
|
The Right2Privacy wiki I created, I've posted more info and resources on the American Virtue Project wiki (under construction).
My bookmarks on privacy, also see tags: surveillance, NSA, democracy etc The Stroz Friedberg Cyber Brief (via Center on National Security)
|
|
Graphic I created,
click on the image to go to my Flickr page for more
info