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The Anti-Surveillance Guide

Posted: October 11th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Privacy | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Ever since spring-time this year we all know that we are all part of a global surveillance program, so sophisticated and deep-running that its almost unbelievable. I’m talking of course about PRISM (incl. XKeyscore and Tempora). All the information we put out on the internet is being intercepted by the forces behind these surveillance programs, I wish I could say that only one force is behind this all but unfortunately it is a collaborative effort between numerous international entities, such as the American NSA,  German BKA and British MI6. With this Anti-Surveillance Guide we are trying to do our part in protecting global privacy.

What exactly do these surveillance programs do?
For starters, they collect all the information you willingly put up on the internet (think Blog Posts, Tweets, Facebook updates, picture uploads etc) and besides that they collect infinite amounts of Meta-data on individuals.
Meta-data is the data that describes your online actions e.g. you write an email to a friend, the meta-data of this email are things like your IP address, the location data of your IP, the time the email was sent, the mail client you’re running etc.
This meta-data is collected from your phone calls, voip calls (think skype, viber), e-mails, browsing history, online banking, instant messages (MSN, Whatsapp, iMessage etc).
Getting access to your computer and file-structures is also on the action plan of these surveillance programs.

Why should I care about all my information being collected?
Before you start thinking “But I’m not a threat, I haven’t done anything wrong.” Imagine it is 1930 and the internet and social media already existed. Poeple put their religious and political views on the web, thinking no harm can come of it. Three years later Hitler comes into power in Germany and has access to an immense database of his people, he immediately knows who is Jewish, who has political views that oppose the Nazi-party, who is likely to disobey etc.
We don’t know what the future will hold and therefore we have human rights laws that are supposed to protect our rights (including the right to privacy) no matter what the future brings.
Therefore it is important to protect your privacy and try not to feed the immense database any more.

How do I prevent being part of this global surveillance?

– Start by being very careful with what you put up on the internet. Always remember “Once on the web, on the web forever”.

– Stop using services provided by the internet giants (Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo) whenever you use any of these services you can be quite sure that all your activity will be visible by the forces behind the surveillance programs.

– Encrypt your communications (your messages, your calls, your emails, everything)

– Support Open-Source applications and services (open-source means that the source code of the app/service are open to see and use for everyone, this way people can have a look ‘behind the scenes’ and find out whether the app does what it claims it does, unlike proprietary software)

– Consider switching your computers operating system to Linux-based systems (as MAC OSX and Windows are provided by Apple and Microsoft, whom can’t be trusted to keep our information safe)

– Don’t fall for the cloud computing scam, Clouds are giant server centers that store all data and info in one place (perfect for NSA, MI6 etc) and are actually nothing new, its just Online Storage with a fancy name and the ability to sync faster than used to be. Try to host your own cloud if you own a server, or find a service that you are absolutely sure you can trust.

– Don’t trust browsers provided by the internet giants, Safari (Apple), Chrome (Google), Internet Explorer (Microsoft)

Where can I find alternatives?
A very good source of alternative browsing and communication options is https://www.prism-break.org
The amount of options can be quite overwhelming at first but just take your time and do your research step by step.

What are The Pirate Shore’s favorites?
Amongst our favorites are:

Browsers: Tor Bundle, Firefox

Browser-plugins: HTTPS Everywhere, HTTPS Finder, NoScript, DNTMe, AnonymoX

IM & VOIP: Linphone, Retroshare, Pidgin, Jitsi, Cryptocat, BitTorrent Chat (in development), Hemlis (in development)

Mail Client: Mozilla Thunderbird, Icedove

Mail Encryption: PGP

Online Storage (Cloud): ownCloud, BitTorrent Sync

Online payment: Bitcoin

File Encryption: TrueCrypt

Search Engine: Startpage.com (Google enhanced), Ixquick.com (results from over 5 different engines)

We haven’t had the chance to test every alternative yet but bare with us as we test more.
Soon we will be posting more detailed explanations of our favorite picks, in the meantime do your own research;)

Tell us about your favorite alternative software in the comments!