SALON

Wednesday, Nov 14, 2012 6:15 PM UTC

Don’t be the next Broadwell

A quick and dirty guide to locking down your online life -- and staying safe from government snooping

By

Topics: Paula Broadwell, Security, National Security Agency, David Petraeus, Privacy, encryption, ,

Don't be the next Broadwell (Credit: Tommaso79 via Shutterstock)

Call it Paula Broadwell blowback. If there’s anything we’ve learned from the tawdry mess that has suddenly overwhelmed our nation’s highest military and intelligence agency leaders, it’s that it’s far too easy for the government to pry into our email. Long-standing privacy concerns have reawakened with a vengeance. Last night, a correspondent amusingly writing Salon under the pseudonym “Fox Mulder” beseeched us to publish “an in-depth story (or stories) on how citizens can regain their privacy from the National Security State.” We’re working on that, but in the meantime, here are some quick and dirty tips for how you can start locking down your online life.

Remember, there are always going to be trade-offs for increased security , the more you encrypt your data to make it impossible for snoops to access, the more inconvenient it will be to get at your own information yourself. So be forewarned — you can find an astonishing plenitude of information on the Web about how to secure your information, but complete privacy is never going to be hassle-free.

1) Your smartphone

The most recent versions of the iPhone’s operating system, iOS, generally get high marks from security professionals, and Android phones have a fairly simple mechanism for encrypting all data, but by far the most important step is to use a passkey that locks your phone. And even that is no permanent guarantee of safety. Four-digit pins can be cracked reasonably quickly by brute force, six digits take longer, and so on. The iPhone has a setting that freezes access if more than 10 different attempts to input a pin number are employed in quick succession. Use it.

2) Your browsing

Want to ensure that a morning spent surfing the Web to figure out how to outwit the FBI is kept hidden from, uh, the FBI? Try TOR — a freely available software program that bounces your online communications through a series of encrypted connections across the Internet. No more “traffic analysis” of your habits, whether by Facebook or the FBI. One caveat: Using Tor will slow your Web browsing experience. For most of the world, that’s probably a deal-breaker.

3) Your hard drive

You’d rather the government doesn’t know that you’ve been writing pornographic fan fiction about the CIA director and a pair of Lebanese twins? Encrypt your hard drive data. Truecrypt is one popular, well-regarded, free option.

4) Your email

There are no shortage of encryption programs that will lock up your email. The old gold standard, Pretty Good Privacy, is now part of a package of commercially available encryption products sold by Symantec. There are also free software options, built on top of the GPG (GNU Privacy Guard) standard. Some may find, however, that their user-friendliness is less than ideal.

But then again, nobody ever said that defending yourself from the curiosity of the national security state would be easy.

Andrew Leonard

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 10 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
144 points145 points | 4 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
106 points107 points | comment
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
36 points37 points | 8 comments
vote
Revenge editing on Wikipedia: The unmasking of a writer who took advantage of online anonymity to pursue vendettas with other writers
12 points13 points | 3 comments
vote
In Montana, dark money brings down a judicial candidate
10 points11 points | 5 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations