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IP: That article about Britain
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 09:31:14 -0500
From: Russell Nelson <nelson () crynwr com> Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 09:09:19 -0500 (EST) To: farber () cis upenn edu Subject: That article about Britain The article you just posted came from a LinuxToday posting by Richard Stallman. http://linuxtoday.com/stories/12846.html . His copyright permissions include verbatim reproduction of the entire article. The remainder of the article follows. If you live in Britain, what can you do? 1.Take political action now. Tell all the political parties that this issue is of great concern to you, and invite each to be the one you will vote for to prevent such laws. Look at www.stand.org.uk for further advice. 2.Write to your MP, the e-Minister Patricia Hewitt (e.minister () dti gov uk), the Home Secretary, and the newspapers, stating your firm opposition to these measures. 3.Talk with your Internet Service Provider's management about the importance of this issue. 4.Start using encrypted mail, using the GNU Privacy Guard or another suitable encryption program, and use it as widely as possible and with as many people as possible. The more people are using encryption, the harder it will be for governments to stamp it out. The GNU Privacy Guard is Free Software (you are free to redistribute and change it), and is available on www.gnupg.org. 5.Once you have read an encrypted message, if you don't need to save it, get rid of it. Don't just delete the file; copy several other files of junk into the file, one by one, so that the old bits cannot be recovered. (The GNU Privacy Guard will soon provide a convenient command for doing this.) 6.If you need to save an encrypted message, use steganography to hide it inside one or more image files, so that it is impossible for anyone to be sure that encrypted data is present. You can use steganography for transmitting messages as well. 7.Anyone, even you, could be a target of this law. Don't assume that you are safe just because you are "not a criminal"; almost everyone breaks some laws, but even if you do not, you could still be suspected. Your friends and correspondents are likely to be next after you. So arrange innocent-sounding "code phrases" with them now, things like "Agnes has a bad cold" (but don't use this one!), as a way you can inform them that you were interrogated by the secret police, without giving the police a way to detect that you did so. You never know what might lead the secret police to your door. Take the necessary precautions now, because the only thing worse than fearing the knock on the door is being oblivious to the danger. Copyright 1999 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium provided this notice is preserved. Richard Stallman is the founder of the Free Software Foundation, the author of the GNU General Public License (GPL), and the original developer of such notable software as gcc and Emacs. -- -russ nelson <sig () russnelson com> http://russnelson.com Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | Government schools are so 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | bad that any rank amateur Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | can outdo them. Homeschool!
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- IP: That article about Britain Dave Farber (Nov 26)