Ever read the Declaration of Independence? I read the first couple of paragraphs at least twice a year. I’ve read the grievances against King George only a couple of times, and then not lately.

In honor of the coming Independence Day I reread the usual again and then went on to read the rest. I was taken by how similar many of the accusations against King George are with what’s been going on the last seven years under President George. Below is the text of the Declaration. Read it all; it’s not long. But I’ve also boldfaced what I found to be very interesting sections and then added my own observations regarding Prez George’s version of these crimes (in blockquotes).

Not that this is an exhaustive list; George  in guilty of quite a lot more than what’s here. Heck, it took Representative Kucinich five hours to read his 35 articles of impeachment against the man!

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

[He and Cheney have called secret policy meetings, closed to public scrutiny using "Executive Privilege"--policy meetings which involve corporate representatives for industry that would later benefit from the policies decided in these meetings without representation or voice of the people.]

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

[He and his administration have fired district prosecutor based on political affiliation and their unwillingness to participate in politically motivated prosecutions.]

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

[Has created a Department of Homeland Security which has collected intelligence, executive, and judicial powers and uses its powers and reach to harass citizens often for political reasons and against those expressing dissent and criticism of his administration.]

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

[Has used the services of private military organizations in operations both foreign and domestic, often as officers of the peace and in use of interrogations, without congressional consent nor oversight.]

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

[He has revoked the Constitutional prohibition on federal military forces being employed in domestic purposes.]

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

[For protecting private military contractors for any crimes and murders committed in these States and overseas in the service of America.]

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

[For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury.]

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

[For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences, and interrogated and tortured by foreign persons on their soil at the behest of his Office.]

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

[For creating White House directives which place all governmental (judicial and legislative) and military power in the hands of his office in the case of arbitrary and non-defined instances of "national emergency."]

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

[He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has conspired with willing and cynical intent to manipulate and manufacture reasons and causes for using America's armed forces in foreign wars for political, corporate, and empirical purposes.]

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

[He has avoided all attempts for petitions of redress by making unparallelled use of "Executive Privilege," has prevented those in his employee acting as representatives of his Office from testifying in front of Congress even after being subpoenaed, has contrived political conditions which has made him immune from being subject to the Constitutional privilege of impeachment for his many high crimes and misdemeanors.]

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Let me ask you a question:

How would you react if one day came home to discover that every room in your house had two or three CCTV cameras installed in it? You don’t know who’s watching them or when or why? Would you be OK with this?

Let’s say someone came to your door, introduced themselves as being a private contractor working for Homeland Security, and demanded a copy of your house key so that they (and presumably the DHS and any one else they contract out to) could come in whenever they wanted to have a look around now and then. Would you be OK with this?

Then I have to ask, why are you OK with what actually IS happening right now with your electronic information and possibly your phone calls? The NSA has their own sealed room at an AT&T switching center with a system that intercepts all electronic data that runs through their backbone. Are they looking at your e-mails or listening to your voicemail? Who knows. Probably not. But they can if they want, and the House just gave them permission to do it with the Senate about to do likewise (years after they installed the room without congressional or judicial oversight.)

• Is the NSA Spying on US Internet Traffic?
• Hepting vs AT&T
• NSA Spying
• A Story of Surveillance

Project Carnivore was once thought to be an urban (geek) legend, possibly intentional disinformation. However, over the last few years, network administrators for various ISP’s around the country have confirmed putting packet sniffers on their servers providing the FBI and NSA the ability to intercept and read all data passed through their network. Supposedly used only on court orders and targeting specific individuals–but with the governments track record lately of monitoring first and forgetting to ask permission later (see recent FISA Court cases) can we really be sure they’re keeping themselves to high and ethical standards?

The administration also got in trouble recently (although nothing’s been done about it) for data mining through the call records of all domestic telephone calls, not just the international ones they admit to eavesdropping on.

• FAQ: NSA’s data mining explained

Q: When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was testifying a few months ago, he seemed careful to specify that he was talking only about the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” Does that mean he knew about the phone data mining effort and refused to reveal it earlier?
It seems likely, but we don’t know. During his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee and in a subsequent letter to senators, Gonzales’ careful wording seemed to imply that there may be additional domestic surveillance programs beyond the one revealed by The New York Times. (Testifying before senators, Gonzales referred to that program as “the program that the president has confirmed.”)

• Report: NSA continues controversial data-mining program
• NSA’s domestic data-mining ops gathered vast troves of info

Data mining is more serious than it seems on the surface:

Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists

It only takes a few questions about you for someone to know exactly who you are without your providing any identity information. Anyone who visits this Web page is leaving information about what site you were at before this one and where you go to when you leave this one, what browser and operating system you’re using as well as what town you’re in. That alone is enough to create a profile on you. But you also leave your IP address which is the most vital piece of electronic data possible which allows someone to track your activities all over the ‘net. Let’s say someone knows what town you live in, that you did a search for “repairing 2005 Scion,” bought a size 10 dress online, and looked at the Web site for a particular church or health club in your town–how much more information do you think they’d need to find out who you are and what kind of person you seem to be? That’s the kind of information available to advertisers, ISP’s, corporations, and their employees and anyone an employee wants to provide that information to. We’re not even talking about what the government has collected on actual specific information on who you called and when and for how long.

These are just a few of the programs we know about. There may be other programs even more invasive that we don’t know about–but that’s conspiracy theory territory and what has been admitted to Congress and the Supreme Court is bad enough already.

Now, when I talk about this topic to people, there are those whose first response will often be, “So? If you’re not doing anything wrong, why worry about it?”

If you’re asking this, let me remind you of my earlier question of whether you’d have any problems with someone wandering through your house without your permission, looking at you and your family, rifling through your stuff, listening to your conversations, whenever they wanted. Even if you’re not doing anything “wrong,” would you not have a problem with this?

I’ll address the abstract principle of privacy and liberty in a moment, but first the practical application of the destruction of privacy and collection of data….

Do you know how big the TSA’a No Fly List is? Nearly a million names. A million. Is there that many terrorists and enemies of the US in the country?! Mmm, doubtful. Names that are on the list include Senator Kennedy,children, soldiers fighting in Iraq, war heroes, and constitutional scholars.

• ACLU calls out US over ‘absurd bloating’ of terror watch list
• Another five-year-old on the no-fly list: meet Sam Adams
• Korean War hero branded a terrorist by draft-dodging Shrub

One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: “Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.” I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. “That’ll do it,” the man said. “

Not caring about being watched and recorded and surveilled assumes that those doing the surveillance and collecting are perfect and without error in judgment and practice and have the cleanest of ethics and intent. If that were true, I probably wouldn’t mind myself! And every night I’d eat a salad of fairy wings sprinkled with unicorn horn croutons. The problem with the government collecting data, wantonly eavesdropping, making lists, is that it’s being done by humans who are quite prone to mistakes, humans that are capable of malicious and unscrupulous actions, for reasons that may be (and most likely are) political in nature and have nothing to do with security and everything to do with power and control.

• Theater of the Absurd at the T.S.A.

Everything about the No Fly List and the security regulations are completely useless for real security: any high school chemistry student can tell you it’s neigh impossible to make an effective explosive out of carry-on liquid containers. Each of the 9/11 hijackers had valid and legal identification. As the above link describes, people can easily make fake IDs and boarding passes–and when the TSA is alerted of such real threats to security, they threaten the whistle blowers with arrest. The No Fly List and TSA security is useless at best, and a tool for the government to harass and monitor political enemies at worst.

The same government which we are shrugging our shoulders about collecting our data and watching our communications is the same government that:

• Signed Homeland Security Presidential Directive #20 which states that should the President declare a “state of emergency” for any reason the office sees fit, all powers of the federal government are turned over to the Executive Branch (the President).
• Swapped the original Patriot Act bill which Congress got to see, with a rewritten one literally in the middle of the night before Congress voted it in.
• Rescinded habeas corpus which prevents the government from arresting anyone they want, declaring them an “enemy combatant,” and disappearing them indefinitely.
• Literally kidnapped a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil and flew them in a CIA plane to be tortured for a year in Syria…before deciding the person was innocent.
• Advocates using torture methods we’ve convicted other countries of war crimes for, even though overwhelming evidence shows torture is ineffective for gathering viable intelligence (as if the human rights violation isn’t enough).
• Puts covert CIA agents and their assets at risk (as well as destroying years worth of trust and asset building) for political revenge.
• Rescinds Posse Comitatus which prevents federally controlled military forces from acting in domestic capacity.
• Uses privately contracted para-military organizations for foreign and domestic missions without Congressional permission or oversight.
• Keeps CIA run prisons in countries which use torture methods even worse than what the White House admits to using–and privately contracted security forces to oversee their operations.
• Infiltrates and harasses organizations that protest the administration’s politics…like Quaker churches.

…to name a few ways in which the government does not act in a responsible, perfect, error-free, ethical manner.

Take a moment to watch this film (even if you’ve seen it before; I’ve posted it on my blog a couple of times…)
.

This illustrates my point perfectly. From a practical standpoint, you don’t have to be doing anything wrong to be a victim of error, incompetence, unethical use of power.

Cory Doctorow describes the dangers of being a victim of mass surveillance:

Statisticians speak of something called the Paradox of the False Positive. Here’s how that works: imagine that you’ve got a disease that strikes one in a million people, and a test for the disease that’s 99% accurate. You administer the test to a million people, and it will be positive for around 10,000 of them – because for every hundred people, it will be wrong once (that’s what 99% accurate means). Yet, statistically, we know that there’s only one infected person in the entire sample. That means that your “99% accurate” test is wrong 9,999 times out of 10,000!

Terrorism is a lot less common than one in a million and automated “tests” for terrorism – data-mined conclusions drawn from transactions, Oyster cards, bank transfers, travel schedules, etc – are a lot less accurate than 99%. That means practically every person who is branded a terrorist by our data-mining efforts is innocent.

In other words, in the effort to find the terrorist needles in our haystacks, we’re just making much bigger haystacks.

Even ignoring the possibility of unethical or political behavior, mere statistics bear out that innocent people who shrug and say “Doesn’t matter so long as you aren’t doing something wrong” may find themselves arrested by DHS, detained, interrogated, threatened and tortured, have their lives turned upside down–because of a mistake. I’ve blogged a dozen times enumerating many cases of innocent people being the victim of erroneous police drug raids resulting in property damage and even innocent deaths. Shrugging it off and saying it doesn’t matter because you’re not doing anything wrong is the worst of rose-colored, Pollyanna, primrose path thinking.

The principle of privacy is an abstract concept but entirely as vital and important as any concept of practical application. As humans in general and citizens of the United States in particular we have an unalienable right to personal privacy as part of our freedom and liberty. It’s a simple matter of principle that we don’t tolerate unknown people or agents of the government walking into our house unannounced and uninvited for no other reason than some vague pantomime of protecting us from the boogeyman. If the goal of the terrorist is to get a government, an entire people, to fundamentally change out of fear and terror–they’ve won. We are willingly handing away our essential freedoms and liberties that we associate with being American for the price of an illusion of security. Allowing them to listen to our calls, collect all our communications data, scan our e-mail and Web browsing, plant RFID chips in our passports and luggage, create federalized identification, all of these are actions that have nothing to do with protecting us from real threats, as all of these steps would have had no effect stopping 9/11, and everything to do with creating a fascist police state.

I’m about to Godwin the post by bringing it up, but bear with me. In the evolution of all fascist regimes and dictatorships, from Hitler and Mussolini to Stalin and Pinochet, there was a time when things were heading toward Bad but not yet there. Fascism and dictatorships don’t spring up fully formed from out of nowhere–they slowly, step by step, on the backs of a mixture of trusting and lazy citizens, rise from nowhere. Before there was Chancellor Hitler, the Fuhrer, there was a small man leading a rabble party preaching conservatism and fear of the outsider. Before there was an occupation of Czechoslovakia and in invasion of Poland in 1939 by the German army, there was a period from 1921 to 1933, when the Nazi Party was formed to when the burning of the Reichstag building convinced the German legislature to give Hitler full governmental and military power. The Nazi Party didn’t take Germany over by force, they inched their way into power using the law, politics, twisted to their ends and allowed by a populace and Parliament afraid of domestic terrorism and economic frustrations and a desire for a strong leader with a strong, conservative vision who will crush the enemies of the homeland.

Sound familiar?

We do a greater disservice to history by elevating Hitler and the Nazis to some fictionally epic evil that couldn’t possibly happen in real life. It did and it can again when people are too uncaring and lazy to take thrats to their freedom and civil liberties seriously, and by allowing folksy plain-speakin’ conservative war-mongers to have positions of great power thanks to jingoist appeals to false patriotism and invoking the spectral fear of the shadowy anarchist communist terrorist bad guy around every corner.

What can we do? Well, various things, but this post is a focus on protecting privacy which can be done by a greater public use of encryption and Internet anonymity. Here’s the irony that ends up working to protect privacy:

It’s a bad thing that the government is making huge haystacks of data and surveillance, erroneously claiming some straw as needles they’re looking for. But, the greater the haystacks, the more ineffectual the mining and surveillance, until it reaches a point where watching everyone and collecting everyone’s data is no longer even desired by those in power. This happens the more “chaff” there is in the system.

• Surveillance: You can know too much

Take London: cover every square inch of the city with CCTVs and you’ll get so much information that you’ll never make any sense of it. Scotland Yard says that CCTVs help solve fewer than 3% of all crimes, while a study in San Francisco found that at best, criminals simply move out of camera range, while at worst they assume no one is watching.

Similarly, if you take fingerprints from every person who applies for a visa – or worse still, from every person in Britain who has to carry one of the proposed new biometric cards – you will fill the databases with chaff that slows down searches, generates endless false matches, and threatens everyone in the database with the worst kind of identity theft.

The more people use secure methods to chat with their friends about the weather, use encryption to share chicken pot pie recipes, use anonymizers in their search for parts for their 2005 Scion, the more frustrating it is for those watching and looking and listening to watch and listen to everyone. At least that’s one theory of circumventing the police state in a grand scale. On the small scale, you have the right to be able to share your chicken pot pie recipe without being eavesdropped on–more so if you’re sharing private personal information or sensitive business or financial information. The more ordinary, non-techie people are using security methods to communicate the easier it is for you to do the same. What good is it if you want to use encryption to discuss anything from plot points of a television show to potentially embarrassing medical information or yearly budget information if the people you’re communicating with doesn’t use encryption or take security precautions.

Here’s something you probably didn’t know but really should: every time you check your e-mail with a program like Outlook or Thunderbird, you are sending your username and password in human readable clear text across the internet. If someone has installed a trojan on your PC, they can read it. If you’re using unsecured wi-fi, anyone in the area could access your info. Anyone who may be snooping between your computer and your mail server can read it.

What if you send sensitive info to Bob, and Bob’s checking his e-mail with Outlook on an unsecured wireless connection? You may have taken precautions logging into your mail securely, but because of Bob’s innocent ignorance your information is open to easy interception.

Here’s another nice thought: man-in-the-middle attacks in this situation is pretty easy for a mid-level cracker to perform. They gain your e-mail access info, intercept a message, make changes to it before letting it continue ion its way with no one the wiser.

OK, now we learn to take some basic precautions:

E-mail. By default most email programs send traffic over unsecured connections (ports 110 for incoming and 25 for outgoing). Find out if your e-mail provider offers secured “SSL” servers (usually ports 995 and 465 respectively). If they do, they should be able to help you change your program settings (Outlook: account properties, Advanced tab).

If you use a Web mail service like Yahoo or Gmail, or even a general ISP but through a Web application like Horde, you’re in better shape. Chances are you’re already using an SSL connection (”https://”). When you log into your mail Web page, make sure the URL has that “s” (https://) and the little lock icon wherever your browser shows you secured connection info (bottom middle status bar for Firefox 3).

Web searching. You know Google stores your searching habits tied to your IP and browser info, right? Here’s a way around that: Scroogle Scraper. (Secure page: https://ssl.scroogle.org/). Read their main page for more info.

Email encryption. OK, things get a little trickier here, but it keeps getting easier than it used to be. Most people who use email encryption use what’s called GnuPG. (You don’t need to go to that site unless you want more info about the tech). You will need to generate a key-pair to do the encrypting and an email program plugin to apply the key-pair to. If you’re lucky enough to be using Linux and Thunderbird, KGpg is probably already installed to help you make your keys and you just need to add the Enigmail add-on (actually, I believe all you need is the Enigmail add-on for Thunderbird as it has a built-in key manager. Which means, if you’re using Thunderbird in Windows, that’s all you need as well! Use your Thunderbird add-on search, or this link.)

If you’re using Outlook, you’ll need to install something like WinPT or better yet, GPG4Win which has everything you need to generate the keys and make Outlook send and decrypt encrypted email. It may be a bit tricky to get used to at first, and you may question its worth-whileness… but it is. (And like Thunderbird and Enigmail, it’s free.)

Security packages. If you really want to get into security, I recommend a package like Steganos. It costs money, but it’s extremely easy to use and a whole lot of options. Email encryption, file (or even entire drive and partition) hiding, encrypted Internet connections (if you can afford that, it’s the best way to go!!) Steganos even offers a free encryption tool on their Web site: LockNote to encrypt data you want to keep on your PC, like passwords and the like, and FreeCrypt which allows you en- and decrypt text that you can cut-n-paste into messages. (The recipient just has to use the same Web page to decrypt so long as they have the password you decide on).

Another is a package endorsed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Anonymizer Anonymous Surfing. They have variety of packages like VPN connections, spam foiling disposable e-mail addresses, file and history “shredding.”

Internet anonymity. Steganos and Anonymizer VPN, mentioned above, provides a secure, encrypted connection which makes all of your traffic anonymous so companies can’t track your browsing habits and visits and tie it back to you. A free option that’s not near as complete and secure, but is a pretty good option…for free, is EFF’s daughter project, Tor. It doesn’t involve any encryption. What it does is send your traffic through a large and wide network of participating relays (of which you can choose to be one) so that you look like you’re one of the many random end servers with virtually no way to track the traffic back to your original IP. It can be slow using it, and it’s not foolproof–that is, if you’re doing something illegal you WILL get caught (I highly discourage doing anything illegal anyway. In fact, not sure I’ve mentioned it yet but I’ve certainly implied it: privacy and security is the right of ALL people and one does not have to be doing something illegal to have use of it.) But if you want to avoid general tracking and recording of your surfing by corporations and marketers, etc, this could work for you.

Drive encryption. Getting a bit more tricky is the concept of drive encryption (whether PC drive or USB thumb drive). If you keep passwords or credit card info or any personal info on your thumb drive which would be a major hassle or even financially ruinous of someone got their hand on it, I highly recommend encrypting it. Steganos Safe is very user friendly, but costs. A powerful, free option is TrueCrypt. But I’ll tell you, unless you know some tech, you might not want to touch it. The Fedora 9 Linux distro has a built-in drive encryption feature. Come to think of it, I think Windows XP Pro (and maybe Vista) also has drive encryption if you’ve formatted the drive in NTFS…except, Windows login security is VERY easy to circumvent. Don’t rely on it.

Well, I guess that it. Final thoughts: Security and privacy is everyone’s right, protecting it is everyone’s responsibility. Don’t be lazy, take time investigate how you are at risk and take steps to protect yourself and your civil liberties. It benefits all of us!

Update (28 Jun 1:30pm): Here’s a new example of how trustworthy and ethical those with power and control use it:

• Local councils in the UK use CCTVs to spy on dog owners, cute butts

And a sign of the times: Sweden, a former protector of civil liberties and privacy, last week passed a bill which allowed the government to monitor ALL domestic electronic and telephone communications.