Edward Snowden's Tips On How to Take Back Your Privacy @LibbyHellmann

 LUCY BURDETTE: Our friend Libby Hellmann always brings interesting blogs to the table to celebrate her new books. This time she's launching JUMP CUT, an Ellie Foreman thriller, much concerned about privacy. I'll let her tell you...

 “The typical methods of communication today betray you silently, quietly, invisibly, at every click. At every page that you land on, information is being stolen. It’s being collected, intercepted, analyzed, and stored by governments, foreign and domestic, and by companies.” Edward Snowden

LIBBY HELLMANN: Regardless whether you think Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor, he has ignited a firestorm about the lengths and limits that government and corporations do and should have over our privacy. In fact, the issue of privacy is at the heart of my new thriller, Jump Cut, the first Ellie Foreman thriller in ten years. Ellie finds herself under surveillance… not only her phones are tapped, but her computers are hacked, and her car has a tracker on it.

Remember when we learned the average person was caught on video cameras at least 6 times a day? And how our emails were (and continue to be) hijacked by phishers? And how our identities can be stolen off our computers or smart phones in an instant with the right tools? What Snowden did was take the theft of privacy to a higher level, by showing us how easy it is for organizations to capture even more data and information.

Facebook is fully aware of your password security questions, your personal details are stored by Gmail and plenty of other websites. Your internet service provider knows exactly who you are, where you live, your credit card number, when you made your last payment, and how much you spent. Retailers track your every visit online.

No wonder there's a growing movement of ordinary people protesting government and corporate snooping. It's serious business. And if you’re anything like Ellie, you’d want to know what to do to arm yourself against privacy and security “thieves.”.

Fortunately, Edward Snowden was interviewed in a Moscow hotel last October, and, in addition to a broad commentary on privacy, surveillance and encryption, he also offered a detailed look into opsec (operations security) and how to improve your own personal security and privacy.

Here's what he recommends.

1. Use Tor, the private browser. Snowden says it's the “most important privacy-enhancing technology project being used today”, letting you keep your physical location private and look things up without leaving a trace to identify you.

2. Encrypt all phone calls and text messages. Use a free smartphone app like Signal, by Open Whisper Systems. When you do this, nobody can read or hear your conversations. It's available for iOS and Android, and it's really easy to use. Although I didn’t name it, this is the system Ellie’s boyfriend downloads to her smart phone in JUMP CUT.

3. Encrypt your hard disk. If your machine gets stolen, nobody can see where you live, look at your files or anything else.

4. Use a password manager to stop your login details from being exposed. It will let you create a unique password for every site you need to log into. They're unbreakable, and you don't need to remember them. Snowden recommends KeePassX, a free cross-platform manager that never stores information in the cloud.

5. Use two-factor authentication so if your password gets stolen the provider can send you a secondary way to authenticate your identity, for example in a text message. When you do this, anyone wanting to hack you has to have your password plus an actual device, like your phone, to complete the transaction.

6. Use ad blocking software to cut the risk of vulnerabilities in code like Javascript and Flash.

  

Extreme  protection?

What if you want to go even further? Snowden recommends using software called SecureDrop – a system for whistleblowers - over the Tor network, so there's no connection with the computer you're using. You could also use an operating system like Tails, which leaves no forensic trace on the computer you're using. Take things even further and you're looking at using disposable machines, which can't be found in a raid so can't be appropriated and analyzed.

As Snowden says (and he would know):

“This is to be sure that whoever has been engaging in this wrongdoing cannot distract from the controversy by pointing to your physical identity. Instead they have to deal with the facts of the controversy rather than the actors that are involved in it.”

He goes on to say, “We need means of engaging in private connections to the internet. We need ways of engaging in private communications. We need mechanisms affording for private associations. And ultimately, we need ways to engage in private payment and shipping, which are the basis of trade. We need to find a way to protect the rights that we ourselves inherited for the next generation.”

Where does it end?

You can keep going to deeper and deeper levels, and I’m sure some people do. Or you could stay sane and concentrate on the six steps Snowden suggests. They will help thwart the most common and realistic threats to your personal security.

How many of you have implemented even one of Snowden’s suggestions? Unfortunately, I haven’t. But Ellie has, so at least she’s protected. 

Libby Fischer Hellmann left a career in broadcast news in Washington, DC and moved to Chicago 35 years ago, where she, naturally, began to write gritty crime fiction. Twelve novels and twenty short stories later, she claims they’ll take her out of the Windy City feet first. She has been nominated for many awards in the mystery and crime writing community and has even won a few. 

With the addition of Jump Cut in 2016, her novels include the now five-volume Ellie Foreman series, which she describes as a cross between “Desperate Housewives” and “24;” the hard-boiled 4-volume Georgia Davis PI series, and three stand-alone historical thrillers that Libby calls her “Revolution Trilogy.” Last fall The Incidental Spy,  a historical novella set during the early years of the Manhattan Project at the U of Chicago was released. Her short stories have been published in a dozen anthologies, the Saturday Evening Post, and Ed Gorman’s “25 Criminally Good Short Stories” collection.  In 2005 Libby was the national president of Sisters In Crime, a 3500 member organization dedicated to the advancement of female crime fiction authors.

Read more at http://libbyhellmann.com

 

Big Brother is Watching You!

RHYS BOWEN: On Christmas Day I watched Edward Snowden on TV, saying that a baby born today will have no concept of privacy—that his every move and thought will be tracked. 1984 come to reality. Big Brother really is watching us. What a frightening thought, isn’t it. And it really seems to be true. Amazon knows exactly what I have been searching and immediately shows it to me on my next start screen. The ads that show up around my emails are for sites I’ve recently visited.

And the thing that bugs me most of all—I visit a site and a little box springs up with a live person saying “Do you want to chat?”

No, I don’t want to chat. Actually I don’t want you to know that I’m checking out your site. In fact the more I think about it, the scarier it is. The sites I check are pretty harmless—Chicos and Hotels.com… but what an opportunity for blackmail if someone checks the wrong sites!  A politician visiting a porn site, for example.(—good plot for a future book??)

I suppose that by deciding to blog online I have freely and willingly given up much of my privacy. As a published writer I am a public figure. I have lots of followers on Facebook and Twitter and I share tidbits from my life with them. But what would I do if this magnified and grew into what Charlaine Harris experienced with strange fans with filed teeth showing up on her doorstep?
I wonder if privacy is not a normal human condition—the first humans huddled together in a cave. In China today there is little concept of privacy and the Communist governments around the world want every move of their citizens to be reported. But America was founded on the concept of freedom of the individual and now that is seriously threatened. So I’m interested in what the other Reds think—are we really in danger of giving up the concept of privacy? Is this necessarily a bad thing?

HALLIE EPHRON: I remember when the House Unamerican Activities committee was in full throttle, ferreting out the Communist menace, and my screenwriter father would say those clicks we heard on the phone was them eavesdropping. I thought he was paranoid. I also remember when, in the early 60s, the FBI arrived to investigate our neighbor's oldest daughter who'd gone south as a Freedom Rider. They questioned me. I was all of 13.

Now it creeps me out when I email someone with a note about something mindless like the neat nail polish my daughter gave me for Christmas (metallic lavender)... and right away nail polish ads start popping up on the side. That feels invasive. I mean, they **are** reading my mail.

On the other hand, what do we expect for free? Which is what my gmail account is. As is Google search. As is my web browser. It's their way of extracting payment... information that can be turned into targeted ad revenue.

The NSA mining of all telephone calls? Way beyond reasonable. When will they start opening our mail?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: This is such a tough question, and it's something that Rick and I talk about all the time (although he's much more up on it than I am.) As a culture, we are fascinated by spying--just look at a list of movies in recent years, or TV shows--and yet WE don't want to be spied on. Can you have it both ways?  Data mining has been going on in law enforcement for years, as in tracking regular phone calls to certain suspect numbers, which then allows law enforcement to get warrants to LISTEN to phone calls if it is judged there is probably cause.  And I'm okay with that. I think. But then, I've been doing a lot of research this last year on white phosphorous grenades--is the FBI going to show up at my door?

Now, with everything we do electronically, data mining is inevitable.  Just stay off the Internet, you say?  Your local grocery store tracks your purchases. The only way to stay out of any database would be to make only cash transactions in person, and I'm not even sure about that.

I do think there should be limits on how much access there is to our emails, texts, and phone usage. But on the other hand, I think people are incredibly naive about what they do make public--"I'm going to Belize and my house will be empty for a week! The key is under the mat!" No social media gives anyone a right to privacy!!! My personal motto is, "If you don't want the world to know, don't put it out there!" Come on, folks.

Maybe we should all go back to writing letters... We still trust the US Mail, right?

 HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I remember, several years ago, people started contacting me in my role as "Help Me Hank" for TV. The emails would say--"Can you believe it??? You can go on line and find out people's NAMES and ADDRESSES and phone numbers. You can find out how much their homes cost, and who they bought them from. They're invading our PRIVACY!"

 Yeah, I would say. That name and address thing, kind of like...the phone book? And the mortgage stuff..kind of like the public info easily available at the registry of deeds?

 But it's scarier, I think, because it's so fast. And what if you're in NYC and don't have the LA phone book? No problem. It's all so accessible. Not to mention the stuff we willingly give on social media: "Went to Las Vegas for the weekend!" "Love my new Uggs!"  Those bits of info are incredibly valuable. And we've given UP our privacy.

 (And there's a bit of it that's--good. I like to see the shoe ads on my page..not so much the "anti-aging" ones, but it could be looked at as a...service.)

 That said: The governent listening to conversations on the phone? Of course that's invasive, and terrifying, and those who say "if you don't have something to hide,you shouldn't care" are missing something--like the constititional protecton against illegal search.

 On the other hand: When the bad guys attack, we all say--why didn't our national security people know about that? 

 But didn't the court just say theres no proof there's ever been an attack stopped as a result of those listeners?

 What would you do, if you were in charge?

Lucy Burdette: this is a hard topic on all sides. Ever since the tragedy that occurred on 9/11, I feel grateful that our security people (whomever they may be) are working to keep a handle on the "bad guys." Remember how terrifying it was to board a plane after 9/11? On the other hand, what sets our country apart from other countries is our ability to maintain private lives. It's a very difficult balancing act.

In the end, I am not a fan of Edward Snowden. I do think his acts have forced us into some critically difficult conversations. But I can't help but think that maybe there was another way to go about it. Oh and one more thing. I had to stop watching the show Homeland, even though I think it was brilliantly done. Because the crazy things that Carrie did, including bugging the Marine's home while his family was out of the house, made me way too anxious. There's a reason I write lighter mysteries:).

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: As a former lawyer, I'm a big fan of the constitution. It's not just the penumbral right to privacy being encroached upon. I think the protections the founding fathers wrote into the Bill of Rights - the right to speak and to assemble, the right to be safe from searches except on warrants obtained through reasonable suspicion, the right to a speedy and public trial, the right to hold property free from seizure except by due process of law - are all under attack. The problem is, they're under attack from us.

Maybe we, as United States Citizens, have lived so long in the safety of the world's most enduring democracy, we've come to take it for granted. We think we can give away bits and pieces of our freedoms - just a sliver, just under these circumstances, only to protect us from bad people. Forgetting the lessons of so much of history: once you surrender a little piece of freedom, it becomes easier and easier to surrender more. And oh, so very hard to get it back again.


SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: I've put off writing on this because I really haven't made up my mind. While I'm not an admirer of Edward Snowdon's, he may have inadvertently all done us a favor by starting this conversation.

And I say that as someone who's researched anthrax online for THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT. Yes, Winston Churchill and his scientists were developing anthrax, along with mustard gas, during World War II — something not known to the British people then. How many things are going on in our name today? (And how many watch lists am I on for having done this research?)

In terms of censorship, though, both the U.S. and UK governments were upfront about it during World War II — people's letters were assumed to be read and sometimes passages considered sensitive were blacked out by censors. In many ways I think if this censorship had come publicly in the heels on 9/11, people wouldn't have minded. In some ways, I still don't mind. But, still, I keep coming back to that quote of Benjamin Franklin's — those who sacrifice their freedom for safety deserve neither.

RHYS: So much food for thought here and something interesting...when I tried to link our various names to our websites Blogger allowed me to do Hank, Hallie and Lucy but not Deb or me. We're obviously on the wanted list because we write about a foreign country!

So do let us know what you think... is it worth giving up our privacy for national security?