THE ELECTRONIC Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a collection of online resources to help netizens protect their data from surveillance by their governments.
The San Francisco, California-based civil liberties defenders at the EFF have developed an online how-to guide called the Surveillance Self-Defense project to help people protect their electronic communications and private data from government spying.
 The website is an implicit acknowledgement that the US, UK and other developed countries have recently become surveillance societies in which shadowy government intelligence agencies and law enforcement personnel routinely intercept citizens' electronic communications and snoop into personal data records.
The EFF says that it created the Surveillance Self-Defense website 'to educate Americans about the law and technology of communications surveillance and computer searches and seizures, and to provide the information and tools necessary to keep their private data out of the government's hands.'
'Despite a long and troubling history in this country of the government abusing its surveillance powers, most Americans know very little about how the law protects them or about how they can take steps to protect themselves against government surveillance,' said EFF Senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston. 'The Surveillance Self-Defense project offers citizens a legal and technical toolkit with tips on how to defend themselves in case the government attempts to search, seize, subpoena or spy on their most private data.'
Because the internet was built out from the US and - even before the internet came into being - the US, UK and Australia constructed the Echelon global electronic surveillance network, it's very likely that more than 75 per cent of international communications over the internet and otherwise are subject to continual monitoring, recording and analysis.
Therefore, the EFF's advice regarding precautions for protecting one's private personal and business communications and data from governmental surveillance should be helpful to people in other countries besides the US.
The EFF explains, 'The guide includes tips on assessing the security risks to your personal computer files and communications, strategies for interacting with law enforcement, and articles on specific defensive technologies such as encryption that can help protect the privacy of your data.'
Staffed with both attorneys who specialise in civil rights law and information technology (IT) professionals, the EFF presents guidance about both legal and IT aspects of personal information security.
The EFF's guide outlines the ways in which the US government can legally spy on its citizens' communications and computer data - and what steps people can legally take to protect themselves. Lurking in the background of the EFF's initiative are allegations that US government agencies are spying on all internet communications illegally, that is, without supposedly-required court authorisations, and that US federal law enforcement agents may have carried out unlawful searches and seizures.
'You can imagine the internet as a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking up all of the private information that you let near it. We want to show people the tools they can use to encrypt and anonymise data, protecting themselves against government surveillance,' said EFF staff technologist Peter Eckersley. 'Privacy is about mitigating risks and making tradeoffs. Every decision you make about whether to save an email, chat online, or search with or sign into Google has privacy implications. It's important to understand those implications and make informed decisions based on them, and we hope that Surveillance Self-Defense will help you do that.'
The US National Security Agency (NSA) happens to occupy a complex of buildings located just outside of Washington, DC that is already straining the electrical grid throughout the entire US eastern seaboard. If enough people within the US and elsewhere around the world were to encrypt all of their internet communications, then the NSA would not be able to brute-force decrypt everything. That would be a victory for civil liberties. (Source: IT Examiner, Robert Munro)
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