I’ve been waiting for an extension like this for years. FireGPG lets you encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify text using GPG from the context menu. Currently, it only works with Gmail, but that’s fine since that’s what I use for most of my important email.

At some point last year, I switched from Gmail’s browser interface to using it with Thunderbird, so I could make use of the Enigmail extension, as well as pull in all my other email addresses (work, domains, spam-pits) in one place and I think I’ll continue to use it, but the ability to just browse to Gmail and not have to copy, paste, fire up a terminal, copy and paste again is absolutely great.

FireGPG currently works with Windows and Linux. OSX is out of luck, but I see on that on the exension’s page that the developers are actively looking for help in porting it. Awesome.

I’ve got a black feeling this morning after reading that the Supreme Court is requiring all US companies to store employee email and instant messaging. It’s fucking ridiculous, not only in burden of cost for companies to store that data, but in the loss of privacy and reality of it’s usefulness.

Anyway you look at it, it’s a punch in the balls for personal privacy. Slap a jock strap on that shit and be a man. Start using encryption. Check out GPG for encrypting email and personal files. If you use Thunderbird as an email client, there’s a real handy plugin called Enigmail that makes phasing in encryption pretty damn simple. For Instant messaging, switch to GAIM (cross-platform), Adium (OSX) or Kopete (KDE Linux). All three have some form of built-in encryption or plugin available. Adium and GAIM both can run OTR, an encryption and plausible deniability plugin. Kopete uses GPG to encrypt and as far as I know, there’s not another client that does that (there’s a plugin for GAIM, but I hear it doesn’t work well with more recent versions).

All these programs are free and open source. If you’re not using anything, I’d suggest you seriously consider it. For web browsing, think about using a proxy, like Tor or if you have the skills or patience to set it up, SSH tunnel to an outside server running squid (here’s a link to how I do it). If you don’t have access to a server like I’ve got, you can run squid on your home computer and connect to it from work. If you don’t have a static IP at home, you can use a free service like No-IP to get access. ISPs don’t like customers running servers out of their home, but if you SSH tunnel it, your chances of getting noticed are pretty nil. I tunnel squid to a remote server I keep and it works very well. I also have Tor installed on all my machines and run it as a server on my remote machine to give back to the network. It’s doubtful you need a proxy for all the web browsing you do in the course of a day at the office, but the option for security and privacy is good to have (not to mention the ability to get around restrictive firewalls).

If you don’t care about all this, so be it. Maybe that’s fine for you. But, depending on who you are and what you do in your life and for a living, you might want to take heed especially if you give a damn about your personal rights and privacy.

Dongle! It’s true, the only purpose of this post is to use “dongle” as many times as possible. Dongle, dongle, dongle. *sigh*

Seriously though, daveb has been struggling all day with a technical conundrum and endless googling turned up scarce and confusing info. Having finally figured it out, he feels bound to post the steps as simply as he can so that other brain-damaged squirrel humpers like himself can get the job done. With that said, daveb presents to you:

How to install your GPG keys to a USB dongle for WIN XP

1. Install the latest binary version of GnuPG
2. Attach your USB dongle and create a folder named keys, or whatever’s appropriate for you. If you have pre-existing keyrings, place them here.
3. Open REGEDIT (START > RUN > type regedit)
4. In REGEDIT, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\GnuPG
5. Right click in the folder and select NEW > STRING VALUE
6. Name it “HomeDir” (without the parenthsis, of course)
7. Right-click the entry and select MODIFY.
8. Under VALUE DATA, type the full path to your desired key folder. For example, daveb’s is F:\keys\ (”F” being the USB dongle). Hit OK.
9. Open a command prompt and type “gpg –version” or “gpg –list-keys”. Check for the Home that is listed, it should now be your dongle and any keys in that folder should now be listed. You’re done!

Now that you’re finished, use a file-shredding program like Eraser to destroy any locally saved copies of your keys. With that done, the only way to encrypt or decrypt with your keys is to have possessin of the dongle. So, keep it safe. You also might want to consider hiding a backup on floppy somewhere (safe deposit box, deserted island, anal cavity) due to the fact that although dongles last a long time, they do have a write-life, depending on your model.