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Freedom Action of the Week
Email List Archive
Free-Market.Net's F r e e d o m A c t i o n o f t h e W e e k
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Edited by Thomas L. Knapp. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this and
other lists, click to: http://www.free-market.net/features/lists/
----- Featured Action of the Week -----
First Week of November, 2001
Monkeywrenching the new surveillance state
(Author's note: If you missed last week's column, you deserve an
explanation. Here it is: I was ill, and unable to pull a good article
together for you. If you didn't miss Action of the Week ... well, that
hurts. Fortunately, depression doesn't run in the family.)
Anyone could have predicted this, but it's still ugly: in the wake of the
September 11th attacks and amidst the war that those attacks plunged us
into, politicians in America and around the world have taken advantage of a
newfound thirst for security to revisit previously failed initiatives. They
know that what couldn't pass muster during times of normal scrutiny will
now go through congresses and parliaments like beer through a frat pledge.
o "Know Your Customer" bank laws that trace the financial
activities of innocent citizens, not suspected of any
wrongdoing.
o Airline "security" measures that bloat the ranks of workers
beholden to governments for their paychecks (and, hence, are
more likely to support the continuing growth of those
governments).
o And, inevitably, blanket surveillance of electronic mail.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation's "Carnivore" surveillance project is
back and hungrier than ever. Wiretap requests are more secretively granted,
on more lenient criteria. The FBI is even pressing the notion that all
email should pass through a limited number of "chokepoints" to make
listening in a simple matter. By government mandate, "privacy" will now be
spelled "prvc" ... they consider it a four-letter word.
I've asked you before to take simple steps to protect not only your own
privacy, but that of others: to download and use an encryption client such
as PGP, or use an online equivalent like Hushmail or MailVault. Now, more
than ever, it's important that you do so. Let me explain why:
Outside of a system known as the "one time pad," there isn't any such thing
as an unbreakable cipher. Even the strongest, military grade encryption
standard can be broken by "brute force" attacks -- if the attacker devotes
sufficient computer processor time to the task. Processor time being a
finite resource, the extensive use of encryption forces choices on the
attacker. Every message can't be read.
If every message that passes through a government surveillance node is
encrypted, the situation reverts to the status quo ante: since every
message can't be read, the tendency will be to use resources for the
necessary messages. There just isn't enough computer power to waste time on
decrypting every last note ("Honey -- don't forget milk and eggs").
Everyone's situation and needs differ. Depending on your operating system
and preferred email client, you may want to use international PGP or one of
its variants, or go with an online, web-based provider.
For that matter, if you really have no use whatsoever for encryption, you
can still help. Chances are that government programs for sifting through
the huge quantities of email that traverse the Internet each day will look
for certain key words ... so pasting the words "-----BEGIN PGP
MESSAGE-----" into your email signature may be enough to make them waste
time. If you won't take the time to encrypt, doing this is an effortless
way to make it harder on our tax-subsidized eavesdroppers.
Web-based encryption for email:
http://www.hushmail.com/
http://www.mailvault.com/
Encryption on your desktop:
http://www.pgpi.org/
Action of the Week archive:
http://www.free-market.net/features/list-archives/activism/maillist.html
----- Alternate Actions -----
The Freedom Action of the Week Club: Commit yourself to doing one
action per week. If the action above doesn't appeal to you, consider
one of the alternate actions at:
http://www.free-market.net/features/action/
If you know about another action or organize one of your own, e-mail
Tom at tlknapp@free-market.net so we can tell the rest of the group
next week.
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