A Brief Introduction:

The purpose of this information is to clearly explain what smime.p7m is. This information is deliberately short, simple, and is not full of technical jargon. Feel free to link to this page from your email signatures, as I do, so that the people who you send messages to can understand what the file smime.p7m is.

You may occasionally receive an email with the file smime.p7m attached, but you don’t know what it is. The good news is that this is not a bad file. Read the rest of this entry »

…but was it such a bad thing in this specific situation?

Normally I would be up in arms over this. I’m the kind of guy who uses a VPN (what is that?) on their regular Internet connection from their desktop PC, uses TrueCrypt, has GnuPG installed, uses Eraser, and I use OTR encryption in my IM chats.

You can also find posts here where I try to inform random readers about why it’s important to protect their privacy online. Obviously, I’m not the kind of person who supports a warrantless seizure of property.

In this specific situation…? I don’t know…

This is not a situation where the FBI came in and forced the library to give up the computers. I suppose they could have threatened the guy and now he’s playing nice to the reporters, but I’m not sure that I want to go that conspiratorial.

Quote:

“The library’s procedure for such requests usually requires a court order, however after the agent described the case and the situation, he was persuaded to give them access, Batson said.

“They had an awful lot of information,” he said, but he was not allowed to discuss specifics.

“It was a decision I made on my experience and the information given to me,” he said.”

I’m back and forth. What would I do if I found myself in this situation? I would strong arm them at first. There’s no way that I would let them. Yet, I’m also a human being who would want to save someone’s life or help find an abducted child or something else of the sort.

Would I be able to live with myself if I stopped that from happening?
Would I even believe the FBI if they came to me with such a story?

It’s kind of doubtful that I would believe such a story.

From what this man says in the article, apparently the FBI seemed to have some real good information. What a terrible situation to find oneself in. Do you believe the information, or do you conclude that if they actually had information that good in the first place then they should have been able to get a warrant? If that’s your conclusion, then how do you wrestle with the fact that perhaps there is a real chance that they could catch the bastage, but they don’t have a day or three to get the warrant and they need to act Now?

How does one make such a moral decision? Which decision would I make? Which would YOU make?

Let’s assume the same situation that’s in this article. It’s a library. Now, obviously we don’t know specifics about this situation in particular, but we have to assume that it’s a terrible situation.

Which way would you choose?

I think, for me, it would come down to their information, the situation at hand, and their attitude toward me during previous similar situations. I’m not inclined to give them what they want, but I’m not heartless either.

This would not be an easy decision.

Technorati Tags: FBI, privacy, constitution, warrant, police, law, government, big government

The surveillance should include all Internet traffic, Mueller said, “whether it be .mil, .gov, .com–whichever network you’re talking about.”

Bold emphasis in the above quote was added by me.

Sounds delicious, doesn’t it? You can read more about it here: FBI wants widespread monitoring of ‘illegal’ Internet activity

What exactly is “illegal”?

Maybe you’re simply venting to a friend in chat when you say, “The president should go choke on a pretzel, and maybe next time someone should help the pretzel!” Uh oh, you went and threatened the life of the president! You poor sod. That’s a secret service visit for you. Never mind the fact that you were merely venting in an instant message conversation with a friend when you said it.

I wonder when people are going to realize what’s happening? Or, rather, I seriously question if they give a damn at all. Maybe they just think, “It’s not MY problem, so I won’t worry about it!” Maybe they just think that their personal emails are so boring that the FBI or NSA simply wouldn’t care to begin with.

What nonsense. Do you really want random strangers reading your IMs, emails, and watching the sites that you visit? So that stuff’s no big deal then… unless the funny picture that you just viewed is showing something that’s technically illegal in your state. That’ll be a $500 fine, thank you very much!

Yeah that’s stretching it thin, but seriously. There comes a point when I say, “You know what? They’re getting what they deserve”. If people just want to sit around on their butts and do nothing about what’s happening, then they’ve worked very hard indeed at earning the loss of their privacy. Cynical? Yeah, you bet’cha I’m getting that way.

You want my philosophy about it? The more that they push, the more that we should push back. You don’t have to be a criminal to demand respect and your basic rights.

• Get a VPN and have all of your traffic encrypted, not just your web browsing. There’s a lot more to cover than just the fact that you hit your favorite website every day.
VPN services cost a yearly or monthly subscription. I use WiTopia.net because it’s wonderfully inexpensive and really fast, but there are probably better (and more expensive) services that you should peruse first.
• Another area of privacy concern should be your IM chats. Do you really think that a group as intrusive as the FBI wouldn’t be monitoring your chats?
Unfortunately a proxy or even a VPN won’t completely secure your conversations. Get OTR encryption for Pidgin & Adium, or at least have SecureIM enabled in Trillian.

Technorati Tags: security, privacy, rights, human rights, anonymous

It’s all over the web now. Good’ol Captain America dies at the end of his most recent comic. The method of his death? Supposedly a simple sniper shot. BOOM! Just like that, and he’s gone.

There’s so much talk about it out there, and so many complaints. Have many of us taken the time to analyze the death of Captain America? To compare it to what is happening in the real world?

Let me begin by using the all-popular list approach:

Read the rest of this entry »

I keep saying on this tiny blog of mine that encryption is super important. I’ve also previously mentioned one of the biggest downsides of using encryption.

Here is yet another real world example of why it’s so darn important to encrypt our Internet communications:

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

Read The Full CNet Article Here.

Doesn’t that concern anyone else? At all?

It’s not that you have anything to hide. Criminally speaking it’s unlikely that there’s anything significant for you to keep swept under the rug. Yet shouldn’t we respect our personal lives enough to actually care about keeping it personal?

Get the free Ciphire Mail (absolutely the easiest email encryption to use) or PGP to protect your email. Get Trillian to protect your ICQ conversations. All of this software is free.

~Steph

The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned.

Source

This is yet more reason to begin using encryption. They not only want to make it legal to pry through all of our communications on the Internet, they also want to force companies to place back doors into our routers and other networking gear.

How do you feel about the FBI nosing around on your home network? But wait, there’s more.

• Require any manufacturer of “routing” and “addressing” hardware to offer upgrades or other “modifications” that are needed to support Internet wiretapping. Current law does require that of telephone switch manufacturers–but not makers of routers and network address translation hardware like Cisco Systems and 2Wire.

• Authorize the expansion of wiretapping requirements to “commercial” Internet services including instant messaging if the FCC deems it to be in the “public interest.” That would likely sweep in services such as in-game chats offered by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming system as well.

These are only a few quotes. You really should read the article, and get encryption for your emails and get instant messenger software that supports encryption. You should also get software that allows you to encrypt information on your computer.

You DO have something to hide; it’s called your personal life!

~Steph

A great deal has been going on in the U.S. government, and by the U.S. government, that is cause for significant concern. From the massive civilian spying to the torture camps ran in other countries, we U.S. citizens are experiencing a de-evolution on a national scale.

One of the most unfortunate – indeed, saddest – microcosmic phenomenons occuring within this de-evolution is that a great deal of U.S. citizens are blind to these things. Or if they are not blind to them, then they seem to think that it is some how OK for these things to be occuring. With freedoms and rights playing such a huge role in our daily lives, one would think (and hope) that such a thing “would never happen”. Yet it is.

Read the rest of this entry »