You’ve probably heard the old joke: The computer which is most secure from online threats is the one which isn’t online.
Most of us use our computers for entirely too many things. If it really is all you have, that’s fine, but for most of us, that’s just plain wrong. The one thing I use it for is communication and storage of my writing. Very popular in current readings are discussions of securing your communications. Sadly, the old joke applies. If you send a message over the public network, it is not really secure. How do we prevent snooping? Two primary issues.
1. Don’t have any secrets. Yes, privacy is one thing, but if you are putting it on the Net, you must stop pretending it’s private. If it’s that private, speak face to face. It’s that simple. It’s okay to have a private language, or use private references, particularly if the message is short, but that’s not secret. If you have any secrets, keep them away from your computer.
2. Honesty. It’s a corollary. Really, it matters more than you think. If you put your mind on being transparent, you won’t have to worry who knows.
You see, there is no conflict here with being paranoid. Having been under federal surveillance before, I can assure you it’s no fun, and it will drive you nuts. As time goes on, as the whole world currently creeps farther and farther down the path of intrusive government which criminalizes virtually all standard normative human behavior, you should expect any day that nightmare scenario to strike close to you, if not upon you. If they can’t find an honest reason to oppress, they’ll make one up. Oh, and I was a cop, too, and I’ll be the first to tell you law enforcement people are such big liars they even lie to themselves. Don’t ever trust a cop.
So you see? I’m paranoid. But I know there is nothing I can do to avoid it, and I am resigned to my fate. Some day, they’ll get me. Meanwhile, I have more important things to occupy my attention. The best protection is to have no secrets, and to speak/write honestly in the first place. I don’t use any kind of encryption. I do use strong passwords, only because it amuses me. I don’t want my computer easily hijacked, but that’s an issue of control, not secrecy.
Yes, there are a raft of sneaky techniques for surfing the Net, such as fine-grained cookie control, remembering to delete your Flash cookies (you know Flash has cookies, don’t you?), and you should probably turn off most graphics and multimedia stuff in the first place. Then, if you expect a lot of cracking attempts for some reason, use a really secure OS, something very few people understand, and turn off every background service you don’t need, uninstall all software you don’t actually use, never use anything with a history of frequent security updates, etc. In fact, don’t even run a GUI at all; just stick with the commandline. Even better is write your own operating system, from assembler code, and don’t enable any features or functions you don’t plan to use.
Or you can always unplug the network cable.
