What Can I Do To Protect Myself?

When we were talking about how to defend yourself against subpoenas and search warrants, we said, "If you don't have it, they can't get it."

Of course, that's only partially true: if you don't have it, they can't get it from you. But that doesn't mean they might not be able to get copies of your communications or detailed records about them from someone else, such as your communications service providers or the people and services that you communicate with. Indeed, as we outlined in the last section, it's much easier as a legal matter for the government to obtain information from these third parties — often without probable cause or any notice to you.

So, you also need to remember this lesson: "If someone else has stored it, they can get it." If you let a third party store your voicemail or email, store your calendar and contacts, back up your computer, or log your communications traffic, that information will be relatively easy for the government to secretly obtain, especially compared to trying it to get it from you directly. So, we'll discuss in this section how to minimize the content that you store with third parties.

We've also asked you to "encrypt, encrypt, encrypt!" in the previous sections about protecting data on your computer and while you are communicating. The same holds true when protecting against the government getting your information from other people. Although ideally you will avoid storing sensitive information with third parties, using encryption to protect the data that you do store — such as the emails you store with your provider, or the files you back up online — can provide a strong line of defense. We'll talk in this section about how to do that.

Communications content that you've chosen to store with a service provider isn't the only issue, though. There are also the records that those third parties are creating about your interactions with their services. Practically everything you do online will create records, as will your phone calls. So your best defense is to think before you communicate:

• Do you really want the phone company to have a record of this call — who you called, when, and how long you talked?
• Do you really want a copy of this email floating around in the recipient's inbox, or on your or his email provider's system?
• Do you really want your cell phone provider to have a copy of that embarrassing SMS text message?
• Do you really want Google to know that you're searching for that?

It may be that the communication is so trivial or the convenience so great that you decide that the risk is worth it. But think about it — seriously consider the security trade-offs and make a decision — before you press "send". We'll give you information in this section that should help you make those decisions.

Another option for minimizing the information that's recorded about you — short of avoiding using a service altogether — is to protect your anonymity using encryption and anonymous communication tools. If you want to search Google or browse Amazon without them being able to log information that the government could use to identify you, you'll need to use software such as Tor to hide your IP address, as well as carefully manage your browser's privacy settings. This section will give you the information you need to do that.

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