This is a really good time to make sure you have backups of all your important files. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to back up the whole system every week if you can afford the external storage space.
Here’s some background: It’s more than a question of good practices in general, and it’s not about silly conspiracy theories. Snowden is not the only leaker out there. We have at least a half-dozen who are releasing information about NSA and friends and how their activities threaten computer use, among other things. Perhaps you are aware that the allied spying services already have several ways to crack your computer regardless of the operating system. And they are always crafting new attacks.
This is on top of several ways to simply infect the hardware itself. It’s called “firmware” which is a term that covers all the programming code that manufacturers put in things like disk drives and motherboards. If your hardware has any kind of snoopware, you may never know. Every time the hardware gets power, the subverted hardware code goes into action before the operating system even wakes up. Most of the time, your backups don’t pick up firmware, so your backups are generally safe from that.
Still, you may have heard that some of the targeted viruses those agencies created (like Stuxnet) did manage to slip out of the target systems and spread to other unintended victims. That’s part of how they were discovered by anti-virus researchers. They know how to take this stuff apart, but they aren’t the only ones who can do this. What if someone with no government agency connection re-engineers one of these things for some other purpose? This has happened at least once.
Researchers who can generally be trusted to tell the truth are actually worried right now. Several of them are chatting amongst themselves about evidence that, whether government or criminal, someone is about to try something new. At least three spying agencies have let slip they would very much like to force every computer user on the planet to keep a backdoor open just for them. Every time they suggest we do something like this for them, they have always gone behind our backs and done something similar without any particular legal authority to do so. We have reason to believe they are already trying to foist their spyware on every computer in the world.
Given that they’ve been snooping on our phones that way for years and lying about it, we can be sure that this by itself is no particular threat. That is, if you understand how the Internet and digital communications work, you know that broad-based encryption schemes never did work properly. You are a fool if you even pretend you can keep anything private once it enters a digital format. Privacy was never really possible, so get over that.
The real threat is complete loss of control and loss of data. Most of that data represents a lot of invested time and resources. Then there’s the purely sentimental stuff like baby shots from ten years ago. Digital artwork, anyone? If you don’t have backups, it can hurt. Some of this spying software is, or can easily be made, the kind of thing that erases your data.
Of course, more sinister are the grander notions they have of taking absolute control over networking itself. The likes of the NSA will do anything and everything to have unlimited access, and their friends in other agencies will be glad to interfere if they don’t like what you are doing. There are factors in the nature of the Internet protocols that limit their interference, but if they can gain that control at the level of your computer itself, they will not hesitate. At some point, these targeted tools will become ubiquitous as soon as they imagine they have the means to monitor all that traffic through management software. I can assure you that they already own the hardware for that kind of management, and they have direct access to the Internet backbone.
I’m not going to make wild promises that one operating system is better than another at resisting this stuff. You already know they use Linux and BSD themselves for security reasons, along with some OSes you’ve never heard of, but most of their work is in a Unix-like environment. You and I don’t have their paranoid expertise in taking full advantage of the security options possible with Unix. Still, my point is not to sell you Linux; you use what makes you comfortable and gets the work done. They can crack Linux, too (though it’s not nearly so easy as with Windows). Most of us have no defense.
Whatever it is they plan can easily go wrong for you and I. That’s the real problem. They aren’t gods and they have made huge mistakes before. You cannot trust their motives nor their competence. All the more so with those more aggressive about “law enforcement” (it never was what you have been told it was) — they seldom have the well-rounded technology expertise because they don’t care about protecting anyone. They care only about getting the control they want, and they are stupid enough to destroy the Internet in the process.
Stop and think about this: Your average big-department police “computer expert” doesn’t understand well enough to use even common free tools like Hiren’s Bootdisk — something I use all the time in my computer ministry (download it here). I’m just a duffer, someone who probably wouldn’t qualify to work in an actual computer business. I can’t count how often I’ve seen direct evidence that the best and brightest of most police departments knows less than I do. And by direct experience I can tell you that the average FBI agent knows only what their superiors tell them. Most of them are frightfully incompetent, and they have the authority to destroy your life. Really smart people don’t go into government service.
The danger is not what they are trying to do, but what is all too likely to happen instead.
Addenda: Two pertinent comments found on Slashdot that I’ll summarize.
First — Giving the “good guys” a key does not prevent someone in the agency from abusing it or losing it to outsiders. The good guys are not good enough, even should we assume they ever were good guys.
Second — Sometimes the pure profit motive is in our favor. The whole freaking world knows the spying agencies are a threat, and if the vendors don’t fight back by refusing to create that backdoor, the world will move to another supplier. Somebody somewhere who doesn’t like government and has better credibility will tell on them.
