[wplug-plan] July's WPLUG GUM - "tin foil hat" edition?

[Justin Smith]

I don’t know if any of you you have been following the the NSA surveillance scandal, but in 
case you’ve been living under a rock, the government is essentially tracking most 
everything you do electronically. It taps into US-based companies for information, and 
they’re legally compelled to comply.

The program they use to obtain this information is called PRISM. Some of PRISM’s primary 
sources of information include Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. You can see the 
leaked PowerPoint slides here: /http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents//[1]

I’m a proud member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit organization 
dedicated to defending digital rights. I don’t believe in shrugging my shoulders and saying 
“I have nothing to hide” or “oh well” in situations like this. PRISM is an egregious incursion 
on people’s privacy;  personal information should be shared by consent, not force.

(Unless there’s legitimate reason to suspect that someone is a criminal. That’s not what is 
happening, though; for instance, the feds have been harvesting the call logs of every 
single Verizon Wireless customer. According to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the 
NSA can wiretap anyone at any time.)

Fortunately, there is open source software that protects confidential information. I think it 
would be fun to have a “tin foil hat” GUM in July where we go over some of the programs 
listed at Prism-Break.org[2], and talk about privacy-related services like VPNs and Tor.

Whether or not you agree with my assessment of the NSA scandal, I guarantee that you 
have confidential information: embarrassing photos, business documents, personal 
records, and so on. Do you know how to protect it? 

Or maybe there’s important information that you need to access. Do you know how to 
bypass Internet censorship or circumvent regional restrictions on streaming content?

Let me know what you think.

--
*Justin S. Smith*
Vice chair/secretary, WPLUG Board of Directors
http://www.wplug.org[3] 

"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done."
-Linus Torvalds

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[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/
[2] http://prism-break.org
[3] http://www.wplug.org
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