Keeping an Eye on Government Snooping

abb_road writes "BusinessWeek looks at the need for better electronic privacy safeguards in light of NSA call monitoring, and more recent administration pushes for ISP data-retention. As the article discusses, though safeguards are already in place, they're easily bypassed, based on older communication norms and don't take into account any 'war-time necessity' arguments." From the article: "There's a crying need for better privacy safeguards that reflect today's world -- and mirror a consensus among America's gadget-happy, cell-phone addicts whose daily chats and text messages are grist for Echelon's computers."

Re:Time to start encrypting *everything*.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to encrypt everything, you should try AnoNet [brinkster.net] - a fully encrypted darknet using OpenVPN and Quagga. Run anything, talk about anything, hide, chat, do whatever you please.

Re:We'd best stop them now!

[TripMaster Monkey]

Bush didn't lie, no matter how many times you say it. Bush acted on the best intelligence he had available.

Sounds like someone needs to educate themselves [downingstreetmemo.com].

Re:Time to start encrypting *everything*.

[jesuscyborg]

I recommend Hamachi [hamachi.cc] as a good, EASY to configure way to secure p2p over the internet. It's free as in beer and works on Windows and Linux. If your lawyers know how to install a program and copy a file to a shared folder, they can securely send you data over Hamachi.

Not a complete answer

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

But an encrypting email proxy, transparent to the user, does make the transition easier. PGP Universal is an example of the breed.

Yes, there's a big sacrifice of security if you have dumb robots designed for convenience doing the key management. You'd need to do regular checking and maintenance. But it should be effective if your threat model is indiscriminate untargeted eavesdropping.

Also doesn't help with voice, also doesn't protect against traffic analysis which is the subject of the current scandal.