Offense Sells Tickets, Defense Wins Games

The title of this page is a quote attributed to Vince Lombardi. I remembered it in context of the recent revelations of pervasive spying on internet communications. The agencies deploying spyware are dialling for dollars. They are offensive, in more ways than one. They want to sell tickets, and those tickets are purchased with government grants. Offense is a spectacle, and the spies sell a spectacle of Panopticon, an omnivision as it were, of all that we say and do. Worse yet, they claim to be able to judge our future intent and actions in selling their quest for power.

In response, what is to be done? A strong defense is one answer. Their capacities fall far short of their sales brochures, their reach exceeds their grasp. Strong encryption and sanitary computing can foil their schemes, the more widespread, the better.

Countermeasures
• Use linux. Drop Windows, Microsoft is in bed with the spies.
• Use a hardened Firefox for web browsing. Drop javascript (about:config, toggle javascript.enabled to false), drop RC4(disable all RC4 entries in about:config), install Perspectives and Certificate Patrol addons. The spies have subverted the certificate signing authorities, they will substitute a signed cert and do a man in the middle attack on you. Perspectives will tell you if others are seeing the same cert, and Cert Patrol will warn you if a previously seen cert has changed. To see who is tracking you, install the Collusion and Ghostery addons (to actually use these you will have to toggle javascript back on, but it is amusing to do now and then ... )
• Use the Private Browsing mode in Firefox. It forgets all cookies, so a lot of tracking goes to hell. Disable network.http.sendRefererHeader in about.config. Just more ankle biting. Keep em busy.
• Your email is a newspaper.Assume it is read unless you run your own hardened mailserver. This can be done, but is a lot of work. Talk to your local linux guru (What ? you don't have one ? Find one soon)
• If you really want private email, use encryption. See above, for your local linux guru.
• Use Tor. It is slow as molasses in winter, but much better if you toggle images to false (about:config permissions.default.image set to 2, this will not load images, which is useful considering the long history of cracks in image handlers, and mostly you don't really need images anyway) The more people that use Tor the more work for the spies. They already control a whole bunch of Tor nodes, but ankle biting distracts them.
• If you send any medical info for US persons through a network in the USA, talk to your lawyer yesterday. The spies are in massive violation of HIPPA, and after the revelations of their reach, so are all US medical providers. If you are a patient, insist on US mail for comm, it is traced, but the contents are still supposedly more private than email
• If you are a lawyer, let the good times roll. Lawsuits will spring aplenty, but you better have hardened email

More detail to come, watch this space. You will see a google ad at the bottom of this page, if you have javascript and images enabled. Google, and by extension, the spies know you have visited this page. (Actually, with the backbone taps and cookie exchanges, they would know anyway) Now they have one more person to worry about, who could deploy counters to their schemes. I find it appropriate that google ad revenue and google software should help fix the trust google has broken.

"Oft evil will does evil mar."

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