16th December 2013
The NSA’s mass spying programs are in full swing this holiday season.
Check out ACLU Action’s parody of a Christmas classic:
The NSA’s mass spying programs are in full swing this holiday season.
Check out ACLU Action’s parody of a Christmas classic:
1st November 2013
Authors for Peace supports
EFF-Campaign against NSA Surveillance
Stop Watching Us!
Ten Steps You Can Take Right Now Against Internet Surveillance
October 25, 2013 | By Danny O'Brien
Published: EFForg
- Use end-to-end encryption. We know the NSA has been working to undermine encryption, but experts like Bruce Schneier who have seen the NSA documents feel that encryption is still "your friend". And your best friends remain open source systems that don't share your secret key with others, are open to examination by security experts, and encrypt data all the way from one end of a conversation to the other: from your device to the person you're chatting with. The easiest tool that achieves this end-to-end encryption is off-the-record (OTR) messaging, which gives instant messaging clients end-to-end encryption capabilities (and you can use it over existing services, such as Google Hangout and Facebook chat). Install it on your own computers, and get your friends to install it too. When you've done that, look into PGP–it's tricky to use, but used well it'll stop your email from being an open book to snoopers. (OTR isn't the same as Google Chat's option to "Go off the record"; you'll need extra software to get end-to-end encryption.)
- Encrypt as much communications as you can. Even if you can't do end-to-end, you can still encrypt a lot of your Internet traffic. If you use EFF's HTTPS Everywhere browser addon for Chrome or Firefox, you can maximise the amount of web data you protect by forcing websites to encrypt webpages whenever possible. Use a virtual private network (VPN) when you're on a network you don't trust, like a cybercafe.
- Encrypt your hard drive. The latest version of Windows, Macs, iOS and Android all have ways to encrypt your local storage. Turn it on. Without it, anyone with a few minutes physical access to your computer, tablet or smartphone can copy its contents, even if they don't have your password.
- Strong passwords, kept safe. Passwords these days have to be ridiculously long to be safe against crackers. That includes the password to email accounts, and passwords to unlock devices, and passwords to web services. If it's bad to re-use passwords, and bad to use short passwords, how can you remember them all? Use a password manager. Even write down your passwords and keeping them in your wallet is safer than re-using the same short memorable password -- at least you'll know when your wallet is stolen. You can create a memorable strong master password using a random word system like that described at diceware.com.
- Use Tor. "Tor Stinks", this slide leaked from GCHQ says. That shows much the intelligence services are worried about it. Tor is an the open source program that protects your anonymity online by shuffling your data through a global network of volunteer servers. If you install and use Tor, you can hide your origins from corporate and mass surveillance. You'll also be showing that Tor is used by everyone, not just the "terrorists" that GCHQ claims.
- Turn on two-factor (or two-step) authentication. Google and Gmail has it; Twitter has it; Dropbox has it. Two factor authentication, where you type a password and a regularly changed confirmation number, helps protect you from attacks on web and cloud services. When available, turn it on for the services you use. If it's not available, tell the company you want it.
- Don't click on attachments. The easiest ways to get intrusive malware onto your computer is through your email, or through compromised websites. Browsers are getting better at protecting you from the worst of the web, but files sent by email or downloaded from the Net can still take complete control of your computer. Get your friends to send you information in text; when they send you a file, double-check it's really from them.
- Keep software updated, and use anti-virus software. The NSA may be attempting to compromise Internet companies (and we're still waiting to see whether anti-virus companies deliberately ignore government malware), but on the balance, it's still better to have the companies trying to fix your software than have attackers be able to exploit old bugs.
- Keep extra secret information extra secure. Think about the data you have, and take extra steps to encrypt and conceal your most private data. You can use TrueCrypt to separately encrypt a USB flash drive. The development of TrueCrypt was discontinued back in 2014 and has subsequently not been maintained. A number of security flaws have been uncovered, but there are some real alternatives. You might even want to keep your most private data on a cheap netbook, kept offline and only used for the purposes of reading or editing documents.
- Be an ally. If you understand and care enough to have read this far, we need your help. To really challenge the surveillance state, you need to teach others what you've learned, and explain to them why it's important. Install OTR, Tor and other software for worried colleagues, and teach your friends how to use them. Explain to them the impact of the NSA revelations. Ask them to sign up to Stop Watching Us and other campaigns against bulk spying. Run a Tor node, or hold a cryptoparty. They need to stop watching us; and we need to start making it much harder for them to get away with it.
Use startpage
as your search engine.
as your search engine.
2nd November 2013
25th November 2012
Do you wonder how the activities of GCHQ and the NSA affect you? Why have spies been monitoring Facebook, Gmail and Skype? And even if are being watched online, how does that affect what we do online? This guardian.co.uk animation, narrated by Jemima Kiss, explains what the disclosures mean for all of us:
The NSA and surveillance ... made simple - video animation
Do you wonder how the activities of GCHQ and the NSA affect you? Why have spies been monitoring Facebook, Gmail and Skype? And even if are being watched online, how does that affect what we do online? This guardian.co.uk animation, narrated by Jemima Kiss, explains what the disclosures mean for all of us:
The NSA and surveillance ... made simple - video animation
16. October 2013
Dear Prime Minister Cameron,
Over the last months we have learned that GCHQ is indiscriminately collecting the electronic data of British citizens and others. We have learned that GCHQ spies on its European allies. We have learned that GCHQ’s surveillance capabilities are expanding and its goal is to “exploit any phone, anywhere, any time”.
Senior cabinet ministers have come forward to admit they knew nothing about the mass surveillance programme. Former directors of UK spy agencies have conceded, in various ways, that “secrecy in this country is over-protected and under-regulated”. Members of your coalition have said "the Guardian has done a very considerable public service". And members of the committee tasked with reviewing proposed oversight of Britain’s spy agencies have revealed “the Home Office misled parliament by concealing that they were already doing what the bill would have permitted”.
You, meanwhile, made only the odd bland and non-committal statement. Your actions spoke louder than any words though, when you approved the destruction by GCHQ of the Guardian’s hard drives containing documents from Edward Snowden. Your spokesman gave an enthusiastic endorsement of MI5 chief Andrew Parker’s speech on how the spying revelations have undermined the fight against terrorism. Your own voice finally rang loud and clear only when you seconded this view in parliament maintaining that the Guardian’s reporting on the issue “is dangerous for national security”.
On the contrary, your unwillingness to engage in an honest debate about mass surveillance is far more dangerous for the country than anything else. Security is not just about being safe from terrorists. Security is most fundamentally freedom from fear – and nothing is more frightening than a state that can spy indiscriminately on its people.
The truth is that you risk abetting terrorism by not addressing the urgent and vital concerns about the way GCHQ operates. Mass surveillance undermines the democratic foundations of our society – which is exactly what terrorists want to do. Moreover, by ignoring the demands of the public for more regulation and transparency you foster dissent and unrest: revolutions are born from disregard of the public will and the common good.
Instead of siding with the people in defense of liberty, as Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff did at the UN, you side with the spy agencies that threaten us. Instead of seizing the opportunity to bring the law in line with technology or calling for a proper review of how the spies operate, you suggest that the Guardian should be investigated for reporting on the spying scandal!
You are ready to undermine one of the few independent bastions of free thought and expression in the UK in order to keep under wraps the workings of your government and the secret services.
One of your predecessors, Winston Churchill, said: “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” Edward Snowden and the Guardian have shown their mettle – when are you going to show yours?
© Priya Basil
Dear Prime Minister Cameron,
Over the last months we have learned that GCHQ is indiscriminately collecting the electronic data of British citizens and others. We have learned that GCHQ spies on its European allies. We have learned that GCHQ’s surveillance capabilities are expanding and its goal is to “exploit any phone, anywhere, any time”.
Senior cabinet ministers have come forward to admit they knew nothing about the mass surveillance programme. Former directors of UK spy agencies have conceded, in various ways, that “secrecy in this country is over-protected and under-regulated”. Members of your coalition have said "the Guardian has done a very considerable public service". And members of the committee tasked with reviewing proposed oversight of Britain’s spy agencies have revealed “the Home Office misled parliament by concealing that they were already doing what the bill would have permitted”.
You, meanwhile, made only the odd bland and non-committal statement. Your actions spoke louder than any words though, when you approved the destruction by GCHQ of the Guardian’s hard drives containing documents from Edward Snowden. Your spokesman gave an enthusiastic endorsement of MI5 chief Andrew Parker’s speech on how the spying revelations have undermined the fight against terrorism. Your own voice finally rang loud and clear only when you seconded this view in parliament maintaining that the Guardian’s reporting on the issue “is dangerous for national security”.
On the contrary, your unwillingness to engage in an honest debate about mass surveillance is far more dangerous for the country than anything else. Security is not just about being safe from terrorists. Security is most fundamentally freedom from fear – and nothing is more frightening than a state that can spy indiscriminately on its people.
The truth is that you risk abetting terrorism by not addressing the urgent and vital concerns about the way GCHQ operates. Mass surveillance undermines the democratic foundations of our society – which is exactly what terrorists want to do. Moreover, by ignoring the demands of the public for more regulation and transparency you foster dissent and unrest: revolutions are born from disregard of the public will and the common good.
Instead of siding with the people in defense of liberty, as Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff did at the UN, you side with the spy agencies that threaten us. Instead of seizing the opportunity to bring the law in line with technology or calling for a proper review of how the spies operate, you suggest that the Guardian should be investigated for reporting on the spying scandal!
You are ready to undermine one of the few independent bastions of free thought and expression in the UK in order to keep under wraps the workings of your government and the secret services.
One of your predecessors, Winston Churchill, said: “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” Edward Snowden and the Guardian have shown their mettle – when are you going to show yours?
© Priya Basil
21. September 2013
Writers speak up - break the silence in Britain
Literature does not have to be political, but writers sometimes must be. There are times when writers have to step beyond their work and make clear what it is they stand for. Since the revelations from Edward Snowden we have entered one of these times. Writers in Germany understood this quickly. In a matter of weeks, an open letter to Chancellor Merkel from the novelist Juli Zeh was signed by leading German authors and registered as a public petition on change.org. On Wednesday 18th September, Zeh and twenty writers marched on the Chancellery to hand over the 67,000 signatures collected for the petition, and to demand a more satisfactory response from Merkel. No doubt Germany’s experience with the Gestapo and the Stasi has made citizens especially wary of the implications of surveillance. Nevertheless, the concern comes not just because of the historical precedent, but from an acute fear of what indiscriminate mass spying on every facet of civilian life means right here, right now.
Writers are perhaps the most careful observers of society. Stories are not just made from the great events of history or the dramas of our time, they are crafted from the tiniest details of every day life. The private, the personal, the intimate – this is the writer’s most precious currency. We examine, imaginatively, the recesses of individual being and feeling where there are no other observers (sometimes the sub-conscious self too is blind). But now, thanks to the NSA, that unwatched space has shrunk. Now every idle web surf is tracked, every movement (while the mobile phone is on you) is recorded, the email written in anger and left sitting in ‘drafts’ is gathered with countless others and could be read by an anonymous agency at whim. Such appropriation is shocking since it is a violation of the sacred domain of the self – the source of our existence as we know it, and of all our creativity. Writers should be more sensitive to this. If they do not notice and react to such an assault on our society, who will?
Freedom is not just the right to speak out or act as we wish in public. The freedom to be ourselves privately, in thought and deed, is equally fundamental. It’s not just Speaker’s Corner we have to protect, the speaker’s small, invisible mental cabin must be defended too. As people who spend a lot of time in the mental cabin, whose livelihoods depend on being able to do so freely writers should be most vociferous in condemning the vast espionage apparatus being sanctioned by our government.
The Defence Advisory Notice issued from the UK Ministry of Defence a day after Snowden’s revelations began is, no doubt, partly responsible for the rather muted coverage of the NSA issue in the British media. Yet the problem is also that political writers in the UK aren’t given a platform. There’s that expression: you get the politicians you deserve. You also get the public debate you deserve. The UK is too fixated on celebrity and light-hearted diversions. People avoid what isn’t easily amusing or entertaining. There’s more political satire and criticism in the comedy scene than the literary arena. Yet simply to laugh about something is also to forget it quickly, to brush it aside. Space has to be made for a more serious discussion, otherwise the public conversation is just babble. Britain as a society has to invite writers to speak up. Newspapers should lead the way and ask British writers to reflect on the NSA and GCHQ scandal. If we’re lucky the writers may say something nobody else has said, perhaps even give us a moral steer, or at the very least they might articulate our own puzzlement, helplessness, outrage or indifference in a way that makes us feel heard and understood.
© Priya Basil
Writers speak up - break the silence in Britain
Literature does not have to be political, but writers sometimes must be. There are times when writers have to step beyond their work and make clear what it is they stand for. Since the revelations from Edward Snowden we have entered one of these times. Writers in Germany understood this quickly. In a matter of weeks, an open letter to Chancellor Merkel from the novelist Juli Zeh was signed by leading German authors and registered as a public petition on change.org. On Wednesday 18th September, Zeh and twenty writers marched on the Chancellery to hand over the 67,000 signatures collected for the petition, and to demand a more satisfactory response from Merkel. No doubt Germany’s experience with the Gestapo and the Stasi has made citizens especially wary of the implications of surveillance. Nevertheless, the concern comes not just because of the historical precedent, but from an acute fear of what indiscriminate mass spying on every facet of civilian life means right here, right now.
Writers are perhaps the most careful observers of society. Stories are not just made from the great events of history or the dramas of our time, they are crafted from the tiniest details of every day life. The private, the personal, the intimate – this is the writer’s most precious currency. We examine, imaginatively, the recesses of individual being and feeling where there are no other observers (sometimes the sub-conscious self too is blind). But now, thanks to the NSA, that unwatched space has shrunk. Now every idle web surf is tracked, every movement (while the mobile phone is on you) is recorded, the email written in anger and left sitting in ‘drafts’ is gathered with countless others and could be read by an anonymous agency at whim. Such appropriation is shocking since it is a violation of the sacred domain of the self – the source of our existence as we know it, and of all our creativity. Writers should be more sensitive to this. If they do not notice and react to such an assault on our society, who will?
Freedom is not just the right to speak out or act as we wish in public. The freedom to be ourselves privately, in thought and deed, is equally fundamental. It’s not just Speaker’s Corner we have to protect, the speaker’s small, invisible mental cabin must be defended too. As people who spend a lot of time in the mental cabin, whose livelihoods depend on being able to do so freely writers should be most vociferous in condemning the vast espionage apparatus being sanctioned by our government.
The Defence Advisory Notice issued from the UK Ministry of Defence a day after Snowden’s revelations began is, no doubt, partly responsible for the rather muted coverage of the NSA issue in the British media. Yet the problem is also that political writers in the UK aren’t given a platform. There’s that expression: you get the politicians you deserve. You also get the public debate you deserve. The UK is too fixated on celebrity and light-hearted diversions. People avoid what isn’t easily amusing or entertaining. There’s more political satire and criticism in the comedy scene than the literary arena. Yet simply to laugh about something is also to forget it quickly, to brush it aside. Space has to be made for a more serious discussion, otherwise the public conversation is just babble. Britain as a society has to invite writers to speak up. Newspapers should lead the way and ask British writers to reflect on the NSA and GCHQ scandal. If we’re lucky the writers may say something nobody else has said, perhaps even give us a moral steer, or at the very least they might articulate our own puzzlement, helplessness, outrage or indifference in a way that makes us feel heard and understood.
© Priya Basil
