'Til death do us part...  

Internet Hall of Fame inductee and inventor of the uber-secure Blackphone says we are living in the "golden age of surveillance." 

What Philip Zimmermann means by this is western governments are increasingly resembling their eastern counterparts in scary ways. So concerned is Zimmermann about government-mandated backdoors to coded services that he has taken his encrypted email service to Switzerland. The end game?  Avoiding compliance with any U.S. orders that may come his way to turn over the private correspondence of his users.

If Zimmermann's move seems dramatic or unreasonable, take a read of The Guardian's observation, which I found to be pretty poignant:

To the average law-abiding citizen, campaigners such as Zimmermann might seem a little paranoid. Public support for [Edward] Snowden in the UK was tepid compared to Germany, where the realities of living under a police state require no leap of imagination.

This is not to suggest the U.S. is not making strides in its attempt to protect innocent citizens from being, in effect, spied on. In a recent ruling, a three-judge 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found the National Security Agency's practice of collecting data about Americans' telephone calls in bulk is illegal. 

To have and to hold... 

It was so good to see bi-partisan common sense on such an important issue in my home state's legislature. In May, the Iowa bill to protect the privacy of domestic and sexual abuse, stalking and trafficking victims passed unanimously in both the Iowa Senate and House.

The Safe at Home bill got its legs when 18 months ago a woman voiced concerns over an abusive ex-husband having access to her home address. Although victims will still need to register their addresses with the state for contact purposes, this law keeps that information protected from the most heinous of criminals. Now, however, it will be incredibly important for the state to keep that information safe from breaches.

What about the offender's privacy, you may ask. What right do they have to the clearing of their records after they have served their respective sentences? Any? Europe thinks they do and has decided to allow its citizens the right to request that Google take down any information deemed to be "inadequate, irrelevant, excessive or outdated." Naturally, this could extend to arrest and conviction histories. Because there are legitimate arguments for both sides of the issue, this is a controversial topic throughout the world.

In the U.S., it's much more difficult to have your record cleared off the World Wide Web. In fact, a contingent of Americans is fighting against digital-warehouse websites that publish criminal records, even after they have been purged from government databases.

I have a growing list of presentation and training events confirmed. Here is the public event where I will be next. Stop by and say hello if you'll be in the area.

August 25: I will teach a class on how to perform a privacy impact assessmentand implementing Privacy by Design within organizations at Data Privacy Asia, Singapore

November 9 - 11: I will deliver multiple sessions at the ISACA Euro CACS Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark 
 

Reader Questions

I was grateful for your tips on securing my home Wi-Fi, but I have a few follow up questions. You recommended putting a wireless router in a secure location. Currently mine is in an upstairs bedroom at the back of the house. Of course, there's a bike path that goes right by that window. Is that okay?

Certainly that is better than on the first level or in an area close to the street. Of course, if a hacker is using a war-driving tool stronger than the free ones available on the Internet, your wireless router is likely to be found. That said, most war-driving hackers take the path of least resistance, which means they use the freebies, and they usually stick to the residential streets. 

You also advised never to use default passwords when setting up a wireless router. I'm using mine, but it's something like 20 characters long and a mix of nonsensical letters and numbers. Is this sufficient?

No. Even through a default may be long and complex, it's often the same long and complex password used for all other wireless routers of the same type. Change it immediately. Here is just one incident where a default password came back to haunt unsuspecting wireless users. It isn't only average homeowners making this mistake either. In one case, a cash register manufacturer used the same password non-stop since 1990.