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Oh and I'm sure Mozilla would never betray your trust either. Oh and make sure you use DuckDuckGo because they say they don't track you at all and you can believe it ;)

I have to use the best of what's out there until better tools become available, as they surely will with all the attention now on privacy and security.

Besides, I'm liking Thunderbird so far. Much better than mail.
 
Not like it matters anyways.
The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.

The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans' communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron Wyden told the Guardian the NSA's authorities provide loopholes that allow "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans".

The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA's dragnet surveillance programs.

The intelligence data is being gathered under Section 702 of the of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the NSA authority to target without warrant the communications of foreign targets, who must be non-US citizens and outside the US at the point of collection.

The communications of Americans in direct contact with foreign targets can also be collected without a warrant, and the intelligence agencies acknowledge that purely domestic communications can also be inadvertently swept into its databases. That process is known as "incidental collection" in surveillance parlance.

But this is the first evidence that the NSA has permission to search those databases for specific US individuals' communications.
 
Yes.

Lavabit is small enough to be ignored by the NSA. Apple and others doing the same would've resulted in some real, and very rapid change.

Apple have lost my trust. My next phone will running something like Replicant, my next computer will be a Hackintosh as I need Mac OS for work.

I've already ditched mail and safari in favor of Mozilla.

So the only thing that would have kept you with Apple products is for Apple to stop making products? Ok.
 
I have to use the best of what's out there until better tools become available, as they surely will with all the attention now on privacy and security.

Besides, I'm liking Thunderbird so far. Much better than mail.

People that think they can keep their online information secret by using different programs / services is about as hilarious as watching those holistic witchdoctors think they actually cure cancer :p

Whatever helps you sleep at night. I guess I'm just a realist about things I can and can't control.
 
So the only thing that would have kept you with Apple products is for Apple to stop making products? Ok.

How long do you think it would've taken for the NSA to back off, if Apple's web services suddenly went dark?

It's pretty obvious that we're at a crossroads here. Either accept that the NSA will know everything about what you on on the net, irrespective of your location, nationality, and in absence of probable cause - or do what you can to fight this.

I won't be supporting any company complicit in NSA spying.
 
How long do you think it would've taken for the NSA to back off, if Apple's web services suddenly went dark?

It's pretty obvious that we're at a crossroads here. Either accept that the NSA will know everything about what you on on the net, irrespective of your location, nationality, and in absence of probable cause - or do what you can to fight this.

I won't be supporting any company complicit in NSA spying.
So are you moving to a hole 12 feet underground with no communication to anyone ever again?
 
People that think they can keep their online information secret by using different programs / services is about as hilarious as watching those holistic witchdoctors think they actually cure cancer :p

Whatever helps you sleep at night. I guess I'm just a realist about things I can and can't control.

That's nice. Glad you find it funny.

Are you suggesting PGP encrypted mail/chat doesn't work? How about Tor?

----------

So are you moving to a hole 12 feet underground with no communication to anyone ever again?

Interesting straw man you have there.
 
That's nice. Glad you find it funny.

Are you suggesting PGP encrypted mail/chat doesn't work? How about Tor?

----------



Interesting straw man you have there.
How else will you avoid the NSA?

You will need to cut the cord to your internet connection, turn off your email and never answer the phone. Don't walk into any public malls with cameras.
 
Hah. 30 years ago & before, if this were happening, heads would be rolling around on the floor. This was publicly unacceptable as far back as the 1910s. Nixon, Kissinger & Poindexter dreamed of this, but were nearly burned at the stake over utter peanuts comparatively. ...course, Poindexter ultimately won with Patriot act.

Half the country thought granting extraordinary powers was a great idea 12 years ago, and the other half were horrified that they'd spin out of control. Now the tables are turned, and predictably, the attitudes are a mirror image. So tribal it's pathetic.

The only reason this country isn't published as the most corrupt country in the world is because we've allowed the corruption to be made legal. ...by the very people whose job it is to prevent corruption in the first place. USA's been on a downward slide for a long time, but the public is finally seeing it's rotten to the core with no mechanism left to restore it.

Best thing for it might be internal collapse, which it seems hellbent on achieving anyway. Tree of life, blood of patriots, etc etc etc... even Jefferson would just shake his head and sail back to France at this point.

Perhaps that's what the Patriot Act is really for. Trigger the uprising of actual Patriots. ...to make it easier to imprison them. I look forward to the next civil war.
 
How else will you avoid the NSA?

You will need to cut the cord to your internet connection, turn off your email and never answer the phone. Don't walk into any public malls with cameras.

Still with the straw man?

Jeez.

It's not about being 100% undetectable, it's about using existing tools to their fullest to do what I can to avoid detection.

Why make it easy for the bastards?
 
Ugh, seriously; the internet needs a freaking politics filter. Enough with the political stories, tech blogs.... who cares.

People with the intellectual capability to debate.

Way to take a pre-1776 quote out of context to refer to being afraid of Facebook instead of opposing British rule.


Whooooosh

Ss540ZC.jpg
 
Still with the straw man?

Jeez.

It's not about being 100% undetectable, it's about using existing tools to their fullest to do what I can to avoid detection.

Why make it easy for the bastards?
When the NSA has taps in all of the fiber lines how undetectable do you think you can be?
 
When the NSA has taps in all of the fiber lines how undetectable do you think you can be?

There's a thing called encryption. You should read up on it.

Snark aside. I installed OpenPGP in Thunderbird last night. If I email you, and you have it set up too, the next email I send to you can be encrypted and only readable by you, on your computer. Man in the middle attacks won't work.
 
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TorMail has been compromised. Tor itself, while a good start, has numbers of (known) vulnerabilities (which you may have known about). It is no panacea, but hopefully over time it will become so.

And that is just what we know about.

That's nice. Glad you find it funny.
Are you suggesting PGP encrypted mail/chat doesn't work? How about Tor?
----------

Interesting straw man you have there.
 
I still don't understand why some people are so concerned. There are millions of people in America. If you're not doing anything illegal or harmful, why are you so worked up about "being watched"?

You know how many secrets and technology the government must have? You'll never know.

I'm not saying to not care about it, but there's NOTHING you can do.

Are you willing to live in a glass house so that everything you do can be seen? No? But you're not doing anything illegal or harmful, so why would you be so worked up about "being watched?"
 
In a perfect world all our data would be private. Trouble is, we don't live in a perfect world.

Those who would trade privacy for safety deserve neither. - I think this is by Franklin... need to go double check...

Okay, here are actual quotes:

Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither.
Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.

Source: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
 
What?

In a perfect world all our data would be private. Trouble is, we don't live in a perfect world.

What? Is this elementary school forum? A perfect world? You have a choice being a person of free will and not living in a total dictatorship yet, you have full control of what you share. You have rights, in this so called Democratic part of the world, you actually have rights, know them, learn them and activate them daily. There is no perfect world to fantasize or achieve that is very childhood playground talk this.

Privacy and the internet is a very serious issue and if these people go behind close doors with out the public being consulted at any stage, you can be sure they are doing what ever they want and leaving us all in the dark.

Please...
 
Are you willing to live in a glass house so that everything you do can be seen? No? But you're not doing anything illegal or harmful, so why would you be so worked up about "being watched?"

It doesn't matter to them or anyone who would want to abuse information, it is not rare. Once anyone gets a hold of any information private or public, they will do as they wish. It has been reported, people are capable of great harm to innocent people too.

If they so much as suspect ANYTHING at all, they will do everything in their great power to make your life a living nightmare for as long as no one fights for your justice out there in twi-tter world.

Don't get worked up, just get suited up with education and awareness people. This is one reason why I haven't owned a phone since 1998.
 
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment

Posting things to Facebook is one thing. Using an enterprise level service that encrypts the transmission communication and then the storage of that content is then encrypted on the server it's sent to is completely different. That's just one layer of security to keep enterprise cloud services acting like local intranet and not the internet.

Then the Government comes along and request the decryption algorithm so they can access users files. Thanks.

Please sit down.

Again...you have not answered my question. What is transparency when is comes to the governement.

You gave up the rights to keep you public activities private when you got your SSN, Driver license, rent an appt, applied for credit, opened a back account etc..etc..etc...

The government collecting data to track activities didn't start with the internet.

Acting like this is somehow differenct than what the government has always done is naive.
 
Nope. Even Snail Mail can easily be intercepted and spied on by the Government.

The only sure way is to train your own messenger pigeons.

HAH!

Yes in fact they do go through you mail and they'll tell you it was searched. They do the same to your luggage while they leave you a poorly written note that they did, once your luggage arrives one day late upon your arrival to your destination.

Happy travels people of the "democratic" world.

HAH!
 
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