<i>Perhaps you think your email is legitimate enough that encryption is unwarranted. If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, then why don't you always send your paper mail on postcards? Why not submit to drug testing on demand? Why require a warrant for police searches of your house? Are you trying to hide something? If you hide your mail inside envelopes, does that mean you must be a subversive or a drug dealer, or maybe a paranoid nut? Do law-abiding citizens have any need to encrypt their email?<p>What if everyone believed that law-abiding citizens should use postcards for their mail? If a nonconformist tried to assert his privacy by using an envelope for his mail, it would draw suspicion. Perhaps the authorities would open his mail to see what he's hiding. Fortunately, we don't live in that kind of world, because everyone protects most of their mail with envelopes. So no one draws suspicion by asserting their privacy with an envelope. There's safety in numbers. Analogously, it would be nice if everyone routinely used encryption for all their email, innocent or not, so that no one drew suspicion by asserting their email privacy with encryption. Think of it as a form of solidarity.</i><p>I'm seriously thinking of having this printed up on business cards (1st paragraph on the front, 2nd on the back) so I can just whip them out and hand them to people. By the time they've gotten done saying, "Well, if you have nothing to hide..." it'll be in their hands.
…and yet so many of us (yes, even the tech geeks) do not use it.<p>There's always a reason: it's too bothersome, we find the password prompts annoying, our friends don't use it, "it's not worth it for the unimportant stuff", "they'll get me anyway if they really want to". We complain about the NSA snooping, but we can't be bothered to properly encrypt our E-mail, even though the tools are right there, in front of us. For free.<p>If you're on a Mac, use <a href="https://gpgtools.org" rel="nofollow">https://gpgtools.org</a> — there is really no excuse, it's so simple and straightforward to use. I'm sure there are even easier solutions on Windows and Linux.
One of the best stories from the PGP saga is that Zimmerman worked with MIT Press to have <i>the entire PGP source code</i> published, in machine readable print. This allowed him to make the argument that his scary-dangerous-cryptosystem was in fact protected under the First Amendment as free speech.
To all the people and law enforcement officials that live by the "if you don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't worry about your privacy", I say that's your very own and primitive explanation. I hide/encrypt/lock my stuff because I DO NOT TRUST you in handling my private info and therefore my life. Most government org cannot keep their own stuff private, not to mention my personal info. Same applies to a lock on my house: I do not lock my door because I sit at home and build an atomic bomb and do not wont officials to know about it; I lock my door because you (LE) do a pathetic job at keeping my house safe from burglars.<p>As I keep repeating, next 911 will not come in form of six people stealing our planes, on our airports hitting our buildings; it will come from Chinese/other government hackers stealing our own data, neatly stored and organized in our NSA's locker-rooms. And that's why its a horror idea for anyone to have all information on entire nation, within one database (I know its bit more complicated than that).<p>As the nation and most others based its order on organized information, you can imagine entire country on a full economical lockdown, once all your credit card, all your social security info and all your data leaks out to third parties/pirates.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument</a>
So, no one ever dares to ask this, but I'm going to because I never see mention of it crop up in these sorts of discussions.<p>Where do you draw the line between an individual's assertion of privacy over confidential information, and contrast it with the premise of intellectual property and the use of encryption to achieve goals traditionally perceived as less noble, such as DRM?<p>Where does the distinction emerge, that my social security number and HIV status deserve protection, but an episode of Game of Thrones does not?<p>I'm not asking this question because I don't understand the distinction. I'm asking this question because it's not often discussed.<p>If information wants to be free, then what is our objective measure, to define the reason why we might choose to confine some, all or none of our information, especially when employing encryption?
Wow, that's one scenario I didn't even consider: the government making it illegal to use encryption. Blows my mind that you could some day be considered a criminal for using PGP.
So.. Anyone wants to do a PGP key signing party in San Francisco? I asked on HN before but no one seems to be interested back then. I hope some meetup organizer can pick this up.
>Advances in technology will not permit the maintenance of the status quo, as far as privacy is concerned. The status quo is unstable. If we do nothing, new technologies will give the government new automatic surveillance capabilities that Stalin could never have dreamed of. The only way to hold the line on privacy in the information age is strong cryptography
I just started experimenting with PGP this week and I was amazed at how easy it was. This page was all I needed to get started
<a href="http://serverfault.com/questions/489140/what-is-a-good-solution-to-encrypt-some-files-in-unix" rel="nofollow">http://serverfault.com/questions/489140/what-is-a-good-solut...</a>
My heartfelt thanks, Phil, if you happen to be/visit here. Not just for the software, but for the accompanying philosophy and enlightenment, and dedication to same. The impact upon me, personally, has been significant. It is something I in turn attempt to share with those who matter to me, personally and professionally.<p>Regards
PGP isn't trivial but thanks to <a href="https://encrypt.to/" rel="nofollow">https://encrypt.to/</a> now everybody can send encrypted PGP messages.