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.

Yesterday, I was given a free CD of the band, “Velvet Revolver“. Pansy-ass cock-rock is absolutely not my thing, but I figured I’d listen to it just for kicks. As I was peeling off the plastic wrapping, I noticed that SONY/BMG was the publisher of the album. Antennas fully perked, I checked out the fine print and sure enough, I had one of those completely fucked up, root-kit installing, DRM-up-the-wazoo CDs of doom and destruction.

Now, since I run Linux, I’m immune to the evil these CDs inflict. On the flip side, I may be immune, but it doesn’t really matter since the CD won’t even play on my computer since I don’t use Windows or Mac which work with DRM. As a result, this CD went straight to the fucking trash bin. No way am I going to sell it or even give it away. It’s fucking poison and the only reason I’m not rip-shit mad about it is that I got it for free and I could give a rat’s ass about the band.

Call me crazy but I’m sure as fuck not going accept or pay money for a CD that will infect my computer with DRM enforcing software and leave a back-door that can open me up for a viral infection and compromise my personal data just to listen to a fucking music album. Furthermore, I’m not going to use an OS who’s terms of use stipulate that in order to use my computer, my rights go out the window and I have to drop panties and bend over my keyboard and self-sodomize myself with my mouse in order to appease the corporate gods because while I may have purchased my computer, the operating system and the CD, they own my soul and have patents on my DNA and therefore all rights and ownerships are forfeit.

Fuck that shit with a rusty screwdriver.

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Get off your asses right the fuck now. Seriously, quit drooling on your keyboard and pay attention.

This Tuesday, the US Senate is going to vote whether or not to have a national ID card system. Called the Real ID Act is America’s answer to the old “papers, please” line from old Nazi and cold war movies. If this bill gets passed, all American’s personal info will be stored in a national database.

Fuck that.

Visit this site and fill out a form that will be faxed to your local senator and tell them not to allow this fucked up, retarded shit to pass.