Push Back Against The Surveillance State

Yard Dart · Feb 11, 2014

There is no question that we’re living in a surveillance state. The only question is, what are we willing to do about it?
Today, over 5,000 websites are joining in a protest called The Day We Fight Back . Participants are posting banners of support and encouraging people to contact their representatives in Congress to get behind the USA Freedom Act, legislation proposed by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). The bill would put curbs on the NSA's domestic surveillance practices, particularly on the use of the massive database of U.S. communications it has been building. (Incidentally, people are also being encouraged to fight against Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) FISA Improvements Act, which would make what the NSA has been doing legal in the future.)
But support from many of the major tech companies – Apple, Microsoft and others that vigorously collect data on users and have complained to the government about the surveillance – has been tepid. However, the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, which counts among its members the likes of Microsoft, Google and Twitter, has lately endorsed The Day We Fight Back's efforts.
Some advocates worry that people don't seem sufficiently upset about the government's unchecked surveillance. They point out, for example, that surveillance through implanted viruses ends up worsening security and making it easier for hackers to attack computer systems. Furthermore, as privacy erodes, so does personal security.
Far from protecting the liberties of Americans, it appears with each new revelation that the NSA is increasingly infringing upon their rights. (The government’s latest defense is that the surveillance is not so bad because the NSA isn't spying on all phone calls made in the U.S., just 30 percent of them.) The spying, which was initiated under the government's wartime powers, is now so egregious that even the Congress-backed Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has determined that the NSA's U.S. phone surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments (the rights to free speech and against unreasonable search). In other words, the idea that such surveillance is necessary contradicts the whole idea of a free country.
In addition to supporting protests like today's online demonstration, there are ways for us to fight back as individuals – and you don't have to go off the grid to do it.
- Use anonymizing software such as Tor . It's a free, open-source Web surfing program that runs in the background and hides the sites you visit and your location. It accomplishes this by routing a connection through numerous nodes or hops. It can slow your Web surfing, but it's so effective that the NSA reportedly has given up – at least temporarily – on trying to break it.
- Use search engines that promise not to collect data on you that can be passed along to the government. DuckDuckGo is the largest of such sites, and its search results are as good as anything you'll get from engines that track you, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
- Secure your data by using encryption. Encrypting information on your computer's hard drive won’t make it impossible for anyone to gather information on you, but it will make it difficult. TrueCrypt is free and can be used to encrypt an entire hard drive. For individual files, there's AxCrypt , which lets you encrypt and password-protect files with a click. It can also be used to send password-protected documents.
- Finally, avoid some of the most obvious tracking and spying methods by using a virtual private network (VPN). By connecting to the Web with a VPN you can essentially hide your IP address, the number that government agencies and others use to trace your online activities. It's the same sort of connection many businesses use to keep out hackers. Free VPN services include Private WiFi and proXPN .
As for all those phone calls that the NSA is collecting data on, there's not a lot you can do about it aside from taking extreme measures like using temporary, so-called burner phones or an app like Burner that provides temporary phone numbers that you "burn" once you're done.
Of course, in the surveillance state, organizations like the NSA will continually try to break these privacy tools. And new tools will no doubt be created. In the meantime, you can check out The Day We Fight Back protests, and call your local representative.
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On The Day We Fight Back, protesters push back against surveillance state | Fox News

Yard Dart · Feb 11, 2014

It’s Tuesday morning. A citizen wakes up, writes emails and makes a phone call.
The person has a meeting soon, so he pulls up Google Maps to figure out a route.
He then hops into a cab, checks Facebook on his phone, texts his friend and plays ‘Candy Crush’ on his iPhone.
After the meeting he heads to the office, logs on to his computer and G-chats with a friend about where he plans to go for dinner that evening.
Later that evening, after dinner, he uploads a photo from dinner on Instagram. Throughout the day, the government was with him every step of the way.
Government spies simply cannot disregard the law just because it is inconvenient.
Until last year, most Americans were unaware that their every move could be tracked by Big Brother.
Through the NSA, the government has the ability to read emails, texts, phone logs, track location and movements, snoop and collect information about individuals through smart phone apps, read g-chats and look at private photos.
The failure to disclose any of this information until recently is why Americans fear for their privacy. And they should. Big Government kept a big secret.
How did we get here? Over the years, technology has rapidly evolved and given power-hungry, unelected bureaucrats the capability to sift through data and find out more information than ever. But just because they can, doesn’t mean they should. But the ease of access to this information was too tempting for government. They snooped, and now we know.
The White House claims that the NSA has no interest in monitoring the activity of “ordinary” Americans. But, most Americans have a hard time accepting that. They question the truth in that statement for the simple fact that had Edward Snowden not revealed what was really going on within NSA in the first place; this snooping and spying would still be going on in the dark shadows of government operations. And, equally important, they know that this snooping and spying is still going on today.
Furthermore, NSA’s own internal watchdog revealed dozens of instances where employees misused their intelligence capabilities to spy on people, even ex-girlfriends. Why? Simply because they can.
The secret truth we are learning is that for years the NSA has quietly snooped and spied on millions of people without a warrant or justification to do so.
In my opinion, illegal activity has occurred. NSA argues that its employees only carry out the actions necessary to find terrorists and protect our country. They have even claimed that terrorist attacks have been prevented as a result of their actions.
If this is true, those success stories should be made public. At a Judiciary Committee hearing last week, I asked Deputy Attorney General James Cole how many criminal cases have been filed as a result of this massive spying operation.
His answer? Maybe one. And he wasn’t even 100% sure of that.
That’s right, the NSA has launched one of the largest data collection programs in U.S. history that monitors who we call, how long we talk to them, who they called, and where our calls were made from, all in order to “maybe” catch one bad guy.
In any event, the ends do not justify the means. NSA has trampled on the Fourth Amendment rights of millions of Americans.
The Patriot Act permits targeted surveillance when that surveillance is justified by a court—it does not permit the intrusive activities brought to light by Snowden.
This old Soviet-style, dragnet approach -- casting a wide net in hopes of catching a big fish -- is not permitted under the law. It is also unconstitutional. It is similar to police searching homes in in an entire zip code looking for one outlaw.
No judge would permit this but that is the type of action the NSA does through massive metadata collection. Government spies simply cannot disregard the law just because it is inconvenient.
The Fourth Amendment gives every American the right to be secure in their homes, papers and effects without fear of government intrusion. The NSA’s actions under OPERATION has been in clear violation of the spirit and letter of the Constitution . Before I came to Congress, I was a criminal court judge for over 20 years. On the bench, I signed thousands of warrants, but not once did I sign a warrant to search homes in an entire zip code in hopes of finding one outlaw who may live there. The same rules apply to technology.
Now that some of the activities of NSA have been made public, Congress needs to reign in the out of control agency. The Executive Branch has acted outside of the law, and so the Legislative Branch must act to restore the rule of law and regain the public trust.
President Obama recently gave a speech about the actions that his administration plans to take to ensure Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights are protected.
His plan is cosmetically pleasing, but it is unworkable. Americans are not buying into the president’s promise to suddenly maintain their privacy from the expanded surveillance state that has developed under his watch.
The president’s directive still allows bulk data to be collected, it just says it has to be stored elsewhere.
Where? That has not been determined.
In the interim, government continues to collect your information. And, after six months, under the Electronic Privacy Communications Act, the government still has the ability to seize information stored by Americans in “the cloud”.
The president has also ordered that a “privacy advocate” be appointed to watch out for the rights of the American people. It is a tall order to expect the country to trust another government bureaucrat.
The days of seizing a haystack in hopes of finding one needle need to be gone forever. Our ancestors eliminated that concept in the Fourth Amendment. Whether it is access to our emails, tracking our cell phones, monitoring who we call, or using drones for surveillance, the fact is technology has moved faster than our laws have been able to keep up.
It is time for Congress to begin a full review of these powers and to strengthen our laws in order to ensure that the Fourth Amendment is properly applied to new technology.
The federal government must stop redlining the Fourth Amendment.
Technology may change, but the Constitution does not.
We can have security without giving up individual freedom because, to quote the constitutional law professor turned president: “There should be no choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.”
And that’s just the way it is.
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The day we fight back against NSA spying and big government's big secret | Fox News

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