Friday, August 23, 2013



In case anyone needs it

Now the GCSB can snoop on all our emails, Keith Ng has a quick and dirty guide to using public-key encryption on Public Address. As for why you should be interested, he also has the documentary evidence that GCSB assistance is NSA assistance. Which means

government agencies can tap into these powers as part of bread-and-butter law enforcement. Through the Bradley Ambrose case, we've seen that the Police are willing to use the full extent of their powers for entirely bullshit cases. Combine the two, and it makes me very, very queasy.
I too feel queasy. Which is why I've just installed GPG4Win and Enigmail at home, and GPG4USB for blogging use. If you want to send me a public key, my (munged) email address is in the sidebar. Meanwhile, here's mine:
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (MingW32)

mQENBFIWGIMBCADGGQaKm+gGUF3N3YiNnS1AbaUjP9FhnMNQ72n7Idy8j3BbeAnU
zOimBLb4tWWv87APC5DU/6YMuW2fSiAUM1N3sBsb6EwwoY21bxENouNraYcjDvah
+IhgpUX5oEGzON3y0rdhC5Jdd+QJhmxYmp2vtzsWnc1RwiHGmugXvrtzSPCv6hIe
+gysKSupVNytgfnWM/Stz+hDZFkFn/QWNpcZE6Q+NXdHR7xEAxJrBVeyo77rFACB
iIy6pxjZAXRvKzYGKX1cnnt5Bf0EaCyaR+XdNG1ATL/I8znhFQGs81mFsm+jUZYt
ZNGMhNXgyWj/6Q+VHXcfepXhzTnB9qMJOxyZABEBAAG0JklkaW90L1NhdmFudCA8
aWRpb3RibG9naWRAeWFob28uY28udWs+iQE+BBMBAgAoBQJSFhiDAhsDBQkJZze9
BgsJCAcDAgYVCAIJCgsEFgIDAQIeAQIXgAAKCRB8VvzUxgqklBS7CACZLrqJcmia
jWa08z2IzmLVQ0topFcasvQSQiHecILRHVernpNDmOaCagmUQu0+WY1CxACouMZS
ngngeM3c5w4awNf21CsAiVeDfLK3D2JSDg/j3XkMA8edZpEkJgbBA83kpK3tcHmH
MEBsnfOB+P5yoRzif8q+soK/zqRv0W6uGkVkHOl2tmMS0k2XX6wzFhyqmYsAAIdF
2hbK2Y5FIoyCEKRdVwsJ7F1RqxULLbNRvTRoIOOqeOQyjvy84vkGN2RR3QzynmLE
b+4u21ZpvOP8UTqn1sVcSkW8q9KtJYqVdJx1x+c69KLxxjwX6zneGAovI6XDGuKv
jx8CNBGcaksCuQENBFIWGIMBCADU6LnT2N7xRmYOWQmrnNGf2qrK2IEw6QhKOFsD
5I8EHh6lE8aCrTbVpZAEYOcCrLDPjdvsx/rxtwbSvsVOAzFrBYUB+WKZ8CL+uhz5
L6GUser6SZPlJLWfsDhRD5DFbqB/wdUBsPUz9qpiwW/qany2239N9SzYAs0cB2qe
e95kzM5Fi6eIz1vO+/X8tjBPn5C2groBhOgNGEDXX6tmSB//IGaqeX3/Vvvd4yfx
QSrcWQJ3K3J8quASJ8OigM5K3WFFccU4mJ1XcUkeWTod7yB0AQ0RqaOnk9mCTyj3
ySTneRi892uFpxOmYCNn+2afLf68oGUZVKBeLdeqFAkNiIz7ABEBAAGJASUEGAEC
AA8FAlIWGIMCGwwFCQlnN70ACgkQfFb81MYKpJTNqwf/XgJ8qKMMYOoxP2vRro9m
K6fM+iNe8Mdu/WDFp3lDSy7sjU1/L4SPhW1AgjIhfi6WJ+aoEKgRjkL/w1sVnOfz
VzKVg8957S/xPIg1e/NCkSTGlh5b00WtUflNAf2qw87fsLm810zaRQpmTDEsp3aR
sVrb13NNuUNM9z6iqu9oyuEI07xoV4ypzv4Qr1DmfFxtIhiwHc1Z89tLAt6RlSZL
5pcR9316i7R6uJD/8IM5AkAzY37xKptjQxxUOhAX/Fi+nOtm8F44x4W3sib+XkLY
+TqRAgpkLXTDU11GtKXbl3hQTTPzdVAjM4gZEAogbpijB5Kv+dRZUI6IJy9sAhCF
3A==
=gzDq
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
(Also here; hit "save link as" to get it formatted correctly).

My key fingerprint is AE1C 445F 7A5E CAAF DA11 3CAE 7C56 FCD4 C60A A494.

Encryption is not the full solution. It only protects content, not metadata (and metadata is immensely valuable to snoops). But it will help a little, and at the least prevent our communications from being casually rummaged through by search functions. If they want to read my emails, they can burn some flops (or some qbits) to do it.