Dear friends,
We are living in weird times and, for some of us, in weird places. I wanted to make sure that you could contact me without having to fear that a third party might be reading over your/my shoulder. So here is what I wanted to suggest to you: you can encrypt your email using a very powerful encryption technique called public key cryptography. Though it is possible that, say, the NSA or the Russian or Israeli equivalents have some super-dopper secret way of cracking these codes, it is rather unlikely (also - check out this non-technical FAQ).
In terms of what software to use, I recommend GnuPG which will run on any computer regardless of operating system. Its also free (as in no cost) and free (as in freedom, open source). For those of you who never had any exposure to encryption there might be a little, but not much, reading to do.
Here is my public key which you can use to write to me:
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
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=FpNW
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
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=FpNW
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
You can also download this key from here.
Kind regards,
4 comments:
I don't know if I would use this, exactly because, if an e-mail I send is intercepted and it is cryptographed, it will likely raise concern. I prefer it being plain open, so no one will suspect that I want to plant a bomb somewhere.
@Carlo: this is an interesting argument which I partially agree with. It is true that an encrypted email does draw attention to itself. However, keep in mind that my blog and email are ALREADY snooped on by the Empire and a few others. Second, the fact that an encrypted communication does raise a red flag does not at all imply that the snoopers can decrypt it. My best guess is that they cannot. Third, the way to defeat the issue you raise is to encrypt MORE, not less, communications. I used to encrypt even the most banal email exchanges with my friends. In fact, I am planning to teach my kids to encrypt ALL their emails with me. That saturates the system and drowns out the really sensitive emails in a sea of irrelevant crap. Think letters versus postcards. If 99.99 of people used only postcards every single letter in a sealed enveloped would look suspicious, but now that everybody is using envelopes that is seen as normal.
Also, for really secure communications, we would need to setup email accounts which cannot be traced to us. Say by using a safe internet cafe or by using somebody's open wifi network. Because the first things the snoops do is not decrypt traffic, but make a chart or a database of who talks to whom. THat is by far the biggest threat.
But the bottom line is as long as all we are doing is exchanging opinions we have nothing to fear anyway. I just know that some of my readers are in crappy places like, say, Saudi Arabia and that they might want to be able to send me an email without having the local thought police reading over their shoulder. Ditto for some of my readers in the ex Soviet Union.
Lastly, I can tell you that A LOT of people use encrypted communications including business and private organizations like Amnesty International. No cops or snoops are that dumb to think that using encryption is an indicator for a potential terrorist. Terrorists, by the way, stay away from electronic communications - as they should - because they know how easy it is to compromise them WITHOUT even using cryptography. So I honestly would not worry about being tagged as a terrorist for using GnuPG.
But of course its anybody's free choice. I offer the option, that's all.
Cheers!
Maybe you are right. I am not an activist, all I do is read and write a few comments, but just by coming to your blog I think I may draw attention from unwanted people. I think that it is safer by don't having anything to hide - and I don't - so my mails just have common personal stuff and some political discussions with very few people, which will hardly be interesting to anyone else. But I have the luck not to live in a crapy place: Argentina is a country which doesn't have political will nor the means to monitor internet traffic, which for law-abiding people is good, as it is a guarantee of privacy.
Anyway, I think I will start using the GnuPG, at least have a try, when I arrive home I will download it. And my next mail to you will be enctrypted.
@Carlo: GnuPG, at least have a try, when I arrive home I will download it. And my next mail to you will be enctrypted.
Yes, give it a try just to check and to practice it once. you never know when such a thing might be needed.
you can even post your encrypted email here since nobody else will be able to read it anyway :-)
(and remember that you will need to send me your public key for me to reply to you)
Cheers!
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