
Trump Is President. Now Encrypt Your Email - qubitcoder
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/opinion/sunday/trump-is-president-now-encrypt-your-email.html
======
aisofteng
Government snooping (and, generally, privacy concerns) date back to at least
Obama's presidency.

I always assumed that someone would be able to access my Gmail account if they
really wanted to, but didn't really care - data mine my emails to deliver more
targeted ads that I ignore as easily as the others, fine by me, I thought.
However, I came across [0]; whether this story is true or not, it is
plausible, and that has made me want to move off of Gmail.

I still use my old Gmail account for ordinary interactions which I do not feel
are sensitive and whose reading by a third party would not bother me. For
sensitive material, I have moved to ProtonMail [1], a privacy-first email
service based in Switzerland and therefore subject to Switzerland's privacy
laws, which I use with a custom domain registered under the Cayman Islands
TLD. I have moved my cloud file storage from USA owned companies to a VPS
hosted in Germany and therefore subject to its data privacy laws. The last
step that I haven't taken is to set up a VPN on that VPS, or alternatively
purchase a VPN service from a country with good privacy laws.

Overall, I am pretty happy with my shift; I do not feel that I have given
anything up and feel reasonably confident that I have the privacy I want for
things I want to be private.

[0] [https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-
seems/](https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/)

[1] [https://protonmail.com/](https://protonmail.com/)

~~~
dllthomas
> Government snooping (and, generally, privacy concerns) date back to at least
> Obama's presidency.

In a similar way to how 500 is at least 7, yeah.

To elaborate, "government snooping (and, generally, privacy concerns" date
back before the founding of the US. Specific concerns around bulk electronic
collection date back at least to the 70s, when concerns were raised over bulk
collection of telegrams - a program ("SHAMROCK") dating back to the 40s.

Concerns about _email_ in particular were a thing in the Clinton
administration (e.g., see "Carnivore").

I understand the impulse to say "but the other side does it!" And that's not
wrong, per se. But it misses the point.

And what's new about Trump is not that he's engaging in more surveillance - I
have no reason to believe that he is. What's new is that he's so very deeply
distrusted by such a wide swath of the population.

------
salesguy222
Whether I do or don't, they're just going to imprison me until I comply with a
judge's order to turn over the password I've forgotten from all the police
beatings and solitary confinement I would have been through at the point.

Technical defenses don't work under fascism. Fascists will just physically and
insidiously torture their rivals.

Security through obscurity is the only way to be pretty safe, and hopefully
you can get some truly powerful political candidates elected that won't sell
the populace into fascism, which is what the US is on its way towards. Beware,
truly brazen fascist states will assassinate your political leaders of the
opposition. See Russia and China for more details

Until then, stay underground!

~~~
839083
It seems like "security through obscurity" could only successfully combine
with encryption if a critical mass of the population got onboard very quickly.
But security-conscious users are just such a minority, even programmers have
bad security habits.

Anecdotally, almost everyone I know is using Gmail or Yahoo for email, and has
never heard of ProtonMail or Signal. They'd probably mark an email from
@protonmail.com as spam...

------
bumblebeard
This is applicable regardless of who's in charge of the national security
apparatus.

Not that encryption does much good against the state anyway; they'll just
throw you in jail until you give them what they want:

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/justice-naps-
man...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/justice-naps-man-
jailed-16-months-for-refusing-to-reveal-passwords/)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Not that encryption does much good against the state anyway; they'll just
> throw you in jail until you give them what they want:

It's clearly not effective against active, targetted collection by the State,
for the reason you mention, but, presuming the encryption itself is secure,
it's useful against passive, dragnet surveillance by the State.

------
robattila128
I found no where President Trump saying Snowden should be executed. He said
"Spies in the old days used to be executed"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1ABLhi2PnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1ABLhi2PnA)

Maybe some haters don't see the difference, regardless NY times shouldn't
rephrase it, is there another direct source of him saying that on twitter or
video?

~~~
mikeyouse
[https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/4724477348...](https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/472447734860218369?lang=en)

> _Snowden is a traitor and a disgrace. Make no mistake, he is no hero. In
> fact he is a coward who should come back & face justice._

[https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/3551192663...](https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/355119266317615105?lang=en)

> _Snowden has given serious information to China and Russia-anyone who thinks
> otherwise is a dope! He is a traitor who fled-he knew the crime!_

[https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/3956837027...](https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/395683702757662721?lang=en)

> _ObamaCare is a disaster and Snowden is a spy who should be executed-but if
> it and he could reveal Obama 's records,I might become a major fan_

[https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/4573149344...](https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/457314934473633792?lang=en)

> _Snowden is a spy who has caused great damage to the U.S. A spy in the old
> days, when our country was respected and strong, would be executed_

Maybe the 'haters' have a point on this one?

~~~
robattila128
Damn that 2013 tweet he really did call for Snowden's execution, I actually
think hes a hero.

------
sdrinf
If you're using chrome, a strong recommendation for CryptUp:
[https://cryptup.org/](https://cryptup.org/) <\- which does seamless gmail
integration for pgp, compatible with all major external keyservers & other
email encryption apps; without disclosing your keys to Google (or any third-
party), or breaking your workflow.

------
camillomiller
I don't get why talking about signal without mentioning that the same exact
protocol is used by the (wildly more popular and Facebook owned) WhatsApp. All
my family members, even an old uncle, use WhatsApp. Much easier for them, it
has some cool feature nonetheless. So, my comms woth basically my whole family
and friends is end-to-end encrypted. None of them was proactive in doing this,
it just fell on their laps and - above all - there was Zero friction. We
should advocate for making encryption default in more and more popular
services, instead of writing the n-th guide or op-ed about how we all should
use this or that encrypted service for the technically inclined.

~~~
aisofteng
WhatsApp has a userbase in the millions, if not billions. It may use the same
protocol as Signal (I wasn't aware it does), but its existence is marketed as
and understood as that of a messaging app. Signal's identity, in contrast, is
predicated upon security. Based on that, along with the fact that Whatsapp is
owned by Facebook and so its functionality can be changed by its owners, I
would also probably advise acquaintances concerned about privacy to use Signal
over Whatsapp.

(Personally, I've been using Threema for E2E encrypted communications with
friends who care about privacy enough to not want to use Facebook Messenger or
other Facebook-owned platforms.)

------
educar
Is this a problem? I have nothing to hide.

~~~
SturgeonsLaw
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have
nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech
because you have nothing to say." \- Edward Snowden

