"But what shall we say to the people here ?" "I'm sorry, his actions are not mine."

[dolari]

You know you live in a scary time when you're talking to someone in the Middle East about American politics, and you're worried your moderate views could get you in trouble with the authorities.

Comments

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Yep. *grim nod*

Donna Barr says somewhere on her blog that she's seen too many Americans giving "the German Look": an involuntary glance over the shoulder to make sure what you've said hasn't been overheard.

[dhd1.livejournal.com]

Too true -- but that's what happens when you vote out of Fear.

<waves hello to the TSP monitors>

[annabellelaw.livejournal.com]

It's betting bad over here in Britain as well...

[shadow-mib.livejournal.com]

I am waiting for the day when they just go ahead and change homeland security officially to "gestapo"

[drkbish.livejournal.com]

This is why I'm moving more and more towards encrypted communications. All of my emails are PGP signed, and my PGP public keys are out there so people can send me encrypted emails.

My mail server supports TLS, so if any server it connects to (or connects to it) supports TLS as well the transmission is encrypted.

My friend Josh pointed me towards an IM encryption system called OTR (supported in Adium, plugin available for Gaim, and a proxy method available for programs like Trillian) that I'm likely to start using.

Do I have anything to hide? Not really. Do I think it's the government's business what I'm saying? No. Do I trust the government not to make mistakes and fuck me over? No.

[shadow-mib.livejournal.com]

Hate to let you down, but I had an ex that worked with the NSA (back when it offically didnt exist) and there isn't anything you can encode that they cannot decode in a few minutes or less. About the only way to ensure security is go into a sealed box and pass notes silently, then eat them.

[amw.livejournal.com]

I think that's being a little paranoid. It is generally accepted that encryption with an appropriate key length is practically uncrackable within a reasonable timeframe. I don't see the NSA having magic computers that can outdo by orders of magnitude anything the top-level HPC and clustering companies are putting together.

On a side note, something that worries me about encryption is that so few people use it, if you used it you'd immediately be flagged.

[http://users.livejournal.com/strangelv__/]

I have it from more than one good authority that anything RSA based is about as good as no encryption.

encryption

[elenderel.livejournal.com]

I wish I knew the first thing about anything you just said. I don't know much about this encryption stuff at ALL but "better safe than sorry."

[trufenix.livejournal.com]

rest assured, when the time comes it won't be what the things you said that'll be used against you, but what you didn't.

Or to apply the Doritos equation; "talk all you want, they'll censor more."

-S.