BLOGOSPHERE SAMIZDAT PART ONE

I'll be posting some thoughts about the Blogosphere, governmental censorship and what the future may hold for free speech. It's a complex and vexing problem but it must be addressed in light of ever tightening governmental restrictions on free speech. If anyone has any ideas, please chime in.

Here are my first thoughts on the subject:

Government seizure of personal information.

For anyone interested in securing data on a computer, there are few steps that can be taken to protect sensitive information. One is to encrypt sensitive information or the whole hard drive with a strong encryption scheme. The main problem with that is that the authorities may charge “obstruction” if they seize the computer and you refuse to reveal the key. Another is to maintain all such information on an external hard drive, and encrypt that. External drives are relatively easy to move quickly and protect or destroy and keep the main hard drive free of sensitive data. Another scheme is to maintain a separate “throw away” encrypted laptop computer just for blogging, again, easy to move quickly. Using a Government grade shredder instead of the trash can is also necessary to insure total destruction of sensitive data that is no longer needed. A final and perhaps most secure medium is an encrypted thumb drive. “Ironkey” is a recent addition which will self-destruct after a few incorrect attempts to break the encryption. Keeping storage media out of the hands of the authorities in the first place is the best defense against the government using your own data against you. This is just a quick over view of security measures and folks need to educate themselves to all the possibilities and nuances of security.