Here’s a handy lifestyle tip for those who are maybe a bit paranoid that someone’s watching. You should act as though the government has everything that you do in digits–on the internet, on your phone, over your bank, etc–in permanent record. Just FYI.
The implications of this include that your email isn’t secure. Your bank records aren’t secure. Your phone conversations and texts aren’t secure. If the government had any sort of reason to research you with its full force, everything you’ve done–including where you’ve been (thanks, cell-phone tower location triangulation records!) at any given time–is on record.
What’s a person to do, if he wants any sort of privacy whatsoever?
Well, you can rely on the legal injunctions that the US government can’t spy on its citizens. Hahaha!
Or, you can take some (albeit fairly small ) protective actions that will at least help you when private hackers start going through your stuff. And it’ll take a while for the NSA folks to crack, too.
For your phone and email: go to Silent Circle and use their apps.
For your data:
– Get a dropbox account
– Get TrueCrypt
– Create the file volume on your dropbox account.
– Encrypt it
Voila! A cloud-based secure repository for all of your secure-data needs. Easy-to-use, too. Tough to crack, unless someone’s pulling your toenails out–but for that, Truecrypt offers a few invisible file options, too.
Then, shred all your credit cards, buy BitCoins and foreign currency, move to pre-paid, disposable phones (or carrier pigeons), get a versatile personal arsenal, and move to Montana with a cabin across the border in Canada.
Just kidding… Anyone believing that the government has a massive clandestine infrastructure for spying must be paranoid and delusional anyway.
Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints 