Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.posted by brokkr at 4:39 AM on October 11, 2011 [8 favorites]
—Bruce Schneier, The Eternal Value of Privacy
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Email : PGP and GPG are venerable tools that provide solid encryption for email, or any messages the users wish to handle manually, like mefi mails. Imho, everyone should have themselves a public-private key pair with the public key distributed via both webpages and key servers. There are plugins for most mail readers that simplify sending and receiving encrypted emails.
IM : Off-the-record messaging works seamlessly enough unless you use SMS gateways, except for possibly moving keys between systems. Adium offers built-in OTR for Mac OS X users. Pidgin has a plugin for everyone else.
Voice : Zfone adds encryption to SIP connections. Skype has encryption by default, but you shouldn't really trust close source cryptography software.
There are many very different tools for web and other traffic, but everyone should be aware of HTTPS Everywhere. Onion routing networks like Tor and I2P provide reasonably solid anonymity if used correctly, i.e. read the directions.
VPN services let you buy acceptable bandwidth with fair anonymity, but such services lack the resources to fight court orders, as anonymous/lulzsec recently learned when Hide My Ass rolled on them.
And the ubiquitous secure shell acts as the swiss army knife of cryptography tools, offering simple VPNs, tunneling, etc.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:12 AM on October 11, 2011 [56 favorites]