What can regular people do to stop NSA spying? That’s the big
question in the wake of the NSA surveillance news that’s shaken the
nation.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a simple answer. There’s no way to
block NSA surveillance completely. Even if you rebelled against
technology, ditched your mobile phone, and avoided using heavily-tracked
web services like Facebook and Google, you’d still be on surveillance
cameras that capture your face, license plate scanners, and credit
databases, among other things.
But let’s not get pessimistic. There are tools you can use
to make it harder for others to track you. They won’t eliminate your
footprint, but they’ll blur the picture of you that emerges through your
data. Read on to learn about them.
Let’s start with a little context. It’s important to remember that
almost all surveillance starts with private companies. Apple, AT&T,
Microsoft, Google, Verizon…companies like these mine your data for
commercial reasons, but they end up having to give it up to law
enforcement when asked. Staying more private means keeping your data out of the hands of the private companies that feed the government.
Once the private sector collects personal data, three main things can
happen to it. You might not care about all three, but you’ll probably
care about one:
1. It’s lost in a data breach. Look at the
LivingSocial breach as an example: 50 million people’s names, emails, birthdates, and encrypted passwords gone in one hack.
2. The company misuses it in a way
you didn’t expect or intend, that violates your privacy, or that makes
you uncomfortable. Facebook is a champion of this kind of misuse by
constantly changing its privacy policies and eroding default protections.
3. The government may use it. Enter PRISM and the NSA.
Whether you’re concerned with 1, 2, or 3, the results are the same
and the solution for consumers is the same: use tools and best practices
to avoid private companies from ever getting your data in the first
place. Privacy laws certainly need an overhaul, but regulation isn’t an
immediate solution for the everyday Internet user.
Tools to help you go private. Read more here.
