Abstract

Privacy and anonymity have been eroded to the point of non-existence in recent years. Our personal, private information is stockpiled and sold to the highest bidder like so much inventory at a warehouse. National Security Letters are written to make countless requests for records from our search engines, libraries, and book stores with no court oversight. Email and especially searchable data is practically unprotected from anyone who might ask to have it. All our electronic communications are tapped. Massive governmental data mining schemes are being built to record everything we publish on the web. In many workplaces, employers spy on and control their employees' Internet access, and this practice is widely considered to be acceptable.

These are dark times. The Fourth Amendment has all but disappeared, thanks to the Wars on Drugs, Porn, and Terror. Any practicing trial lawyer will tell you that you can no longer rely on unreasonable search to be the basis for excluding evidence, especially for digital evidence in the hands of a third party. Likewise the First Amendment has been shredded with exceptions and provisos, and is only truly available to those with the money to fight costly (and usually frivolous) court battles against large corporations. In short, you can say what you want so long as it doesn't effect corporate profits.

How we got to a legal state where this all this activity is the accepted norm, I'm not quite sure. It seems to stem from an underlying assumption that our function at work and at home is that of a diligent slave - a single unit of economic output under the direct watch and total control of our superiors at all times; that we should accept this surveillance because we should have nothing to hide from our benevolent overlords who are watching us merely to protect us from evil.

I believe this view is wrong. Moreover, I believe it is time to reverse the tide. This document seeks to provide the means to protect your right to privacy, freedom of speech, and anonymous net access even under the most draconian of conditions - including, but not limited to, both private and criminal investigation (which happens far more often to innocent people than one might like to think). "So what are you saying? That I can dodge bullets?" "No.. What I am trying to tell you is that when you're ready, you won't have to."