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Our communications -- email, Facebook posts, personal chats, instant messages, phone conversations, Skype calls -- will never be the same. Technologically, we've been had. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Starting our fourth decade: Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously online for 31 years
Trust the government? No way
July 13, 2014
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2014, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2014, The Post-Standard
Did you ever think it would come to this -- that in this glorious republic, the envy of countless younger nations around the world, you can't trust the government?
I've never taken political stands in the three decades I've been writing this column. I'm not going to start now. But I'm taking a technological stand. All the king's horses and all the king's men won't be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Our communications -- email, Facebook posts, personal chats, instant messages, phone conversations, Skype calls -- will never be the same. Technologically, we've been had. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Even if the government stopped snooping tomorrow through some miracle of common sense and respect for the Constitution, the damage is done. Trust is something you earn. At this point, there's nothing in the bank.
I don't know what you can do about the political side of this. But I have some suggestions about the tech side.
First, you can never have an expectation of privacy. Don't say anything in an email or any other kind of Internet communication that would get you in trouble if, instead, you drove to Washington and said it to an investigator of the National Security Agency. Because putting it in an email or any other communication means you are, in fact, saying it to the NSA.
I'm not talking about plots to assassinate someone or schemes to overthrow the government. (By the way, you can be sure my previous sentence guarantees this column is making it straight to the NSA. I hope you don't think I'm kidding.) I'm just saying you should refrain from anything that could be used against you.
Examples: An email in which you boast about shaving $3,600 off your tax bill by altering the numbers. (You're now a tax cheat in an NSA personal file.) Or a Skype call that touches on gun rights. (You're now a possible member of a radical organization.)
This is scary. I became a fledgling expert on Soviet history in college, learning how to read and speak passable Russian and devouring whatever I could find on the subject. Under Stalin, Russians couldn't trust the government. For good reasons, too.
We have good reasons. Just like the Russians under Stalin.
I wish I had better news. Your friends or your brother-in-law will tell you to encrypt your email if you want to keep the government from snooping. But that won't work. We know this for two reasons. The NSA planted secretly breakable encryption code in the agency that directs such encryption. And anyway, the NSA has already broken the codes for all other standard encryption methods and will keep breaking new ones.
It's a lose-lose situation. Hiding the content of your mail is pointless. You can't hide it. And of course you can't hide what you post on Facebook.
Take this sort of thing seriously. Do whatever you want to do politically. Or maybe don't do anything at all politically. But in your daily non-political life, on the technological side, don't expect even the slightest chance of privacy.
Just hunker down.