Computer Security and Free Software for Activists

Presented by: San Diego Indymedia http://sandiego.indymedia.org

Intro, ground rules, disclaimer. Who am I, why I'm doing this workshop, how the workshop will run.

Intro to security

What is really secure?
Who needs security?

• animal lib, environmental DA
  
• anti-war, http://www.counterpunch.org/heyman01312004.html
  
• video activists
  

The right to privacy
Why I wrote PGP by Phil Zimmerman
http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html
What is Security Culture?
http://security.resist.ca/

Intro to email security

How secure is regular email?

As secure as writing all your mail on postcards. Don't write anything in email you wouldn't want to defend in court.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(FBI)

The PATRIOT act and your email

http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/usapatriot/

• One step up, IMAPS, POPS, TLS
  
• Webmail, SSL
  
• Some webmail carriers: yahoo, hotmail, gmail, riseup.net, resist.ca
  
• Anonymous Remailers:
  • http://www.andrebacard.com/remail.html
    
  • http://riot.eu.org/anon/
    

Intro to Public Key Encryption

What is Public Key Encryption?
Why should I trust this?
Getting and using GPG

• Installing it
  
• http://www.gnupg.org/
  
• Generating a key pair
  
• Using it for email
  
• Using it for files
  

Good Practices
http://pgp.mit.edu
Revocation Certificate
Resources for Encryption:
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html, Bruce Schneier

Web Browsing

TOR - tor.eff.org
SSL again
Cookies, info you don't know you're sharing
Anonymizer.com
Using libraries

Instant Messaging

Off the record messaging

Spyware

What is it?
What does it mean about my computer?
How do I get rid of it?
How do I not get it in the first place? Use firefox.

GNU/Linux

What is it?
How can I try it out?
http://knoppix.org
How can I use it long term?
http://debian.org

Open Office

What is it?
Why use it?
Where to get it?
http://openoffice.org

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other useful texts on security:

• http://cat.org.au/~gdm/security.txt - this was a text file produced for presentation about security for activists - it is by no means complete but is a useful document to spark discussion from (plus has a few little diagrams)

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-- SdLotus - 17 Feb 2005
-- GarconDuMonde - 19 Feb 2005
-- SdLotus - 21 Feb 2007 - added tor, otr and a line about email.
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