I was thinking more along the lines of Snow Crash or Shadowrun actually; privatized police enforcement working for super-national sovereign mega-corporations.

null hypothesis --> there is no god or he/she/it/they do not interact with the observable universe in any meaningfully detectable way.
your hypothesis --> there is a god and he/she/it/they do interact with the observable universe in a repeatable detectable manner.

The null hypothesis is the default in science. Proving something is not due to random chance is how science works. That's why we have confidence limits, these limits may be very small but there is still always the chance that it the null hypothesis is correct. This caveat, that a scientific theory must always be falsifiable, is the core of the scientific method; the thought that whatever phenomena we are measuring could still be due to blind luck is why science works as well as it does because it means that we only accept something only after rigorous testing.

Also, as an aside, saying that life evolved from simpler organisms into more complex forms as opposed to fully formed ex nihilo does not automatically preclude the existence of a god. Deism is perfectly compatible with evolution for example.

Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange allows you to securely share a secret key over an insecure medium. Combining this with asymmetric cryptography to identify parties is how modern handshake protocols work.

The problem here how to trust Bob's asymmetric key really came from Bob and not Eve.

You are correct in that the ideal solution would be to talk to Bob over a different medium (like phone) and ask him if that is his key but there are ways to do this over the wire. As an example, several Linux distros sign their LiveCD images with cryptographic keys and post the keys' fingerprints on their web page. Can these be spoofed? Sure, hack the server hosting the files. That requires additional effort (and risk) though which would dissuade most cyber-criminals from attempting it.

Is this perfect security? No, but there is no such thing short of chucking whatever you want secured into a black hole.

You have no idea what Microsoft's culture is like do you? Half of Microsoft's problems are related to it's culture, stack ranking (bottom 20% of workforce gets the boot) destroys morale and actively encourages sabotage and office politics ("I'm sure as hell not gonna be the poor SOB on the bottom of the stack, I'll arrange for Bob's project to go to custard and then HE'LL be the poor SOB on the bottom and out the door!")

Not to say Sony is any better, they are Evil incarnate, but your rosy view of Microsoft's culture, especially considering how infamously corrosive it is, makes me think you are a fanboi.

Have you tried looking at the wiki? 1-click installs for all the blobs

Not necessarily the second group, Republicans certainly acknowledge the existence of the Tea Party but you can be damn sure they aren't gonna give them even a farcical version of "good healthcare" (not that they would take it)

Then you are missing the point of civil disobedience. You are supposed to get caught, especially in places like the US where LEOs like to have a bit of theatricality in perp-walking someone out to the squad car. You want all the attention you can get, that's the point, you are calling attention to something you believe to be wrong.

I dunno, he seems pretty surly to me...

Considering that Obama had to publicly promise not to execute Snowden if he were to be extradited from Russia I really don't blame him for running. If he stayed in the US he would likely be a martyr by now.

OK lets say that in context your advice is sound and I now thoroughly understand the math behind modern crypto systems. How am I going to be sure the math is correctly implemented? Are you advocating that in addition to having a deep understanding of some fairly esoteric maths I now need to be an expert enough coder to judge the Underhanded C Contest as well? Because that is what you are asking and for 95% of folks on the net or event people here on /. that is asking the impossible.

Bonus points for creating an expert system to play back various prerecorded messages as the sap on the phones works through a generic T-Tree until they have exhausted all options but to actually bug you. Double-plus bonus points if the expert phone system was designed by the BOFH.

ProcMon ProcExp and ProcDump All go a long way toward tracking that sort of info down and are all free (as in beer) to boot.

Because "our betters" use those money-saving services. Therefore they are A-OK with storing money offshore and will not prosecute such activities.

SpiderOak would be a good one. It's cross-platform, FOSS-friendly, and has a rather impressive feature-set. I'm frankly surprised they aren't better known by now.