Email Encryption for Beginners (re-scheduled)
Saturday 29th June 5:00pm
The first of a monthly (last Saturday of each month) computer workshop aiming to provide jargon-free workshops on useful programs.
No experience necessary, but if you have a laptop and USB stick please bring these with you.
A non-encrypted e-mail message sent through the Internet is like a postcard without an envelope: postpeople, neighbours and anybody else who can put their hands on it will easily read the message you’ve written. Unlike a postcard an email is copied (rather than moved) to many different computers on its travels. All of these computers’ owners we can’t possibly trust and know. This makes me feel uncomfortable and is not necessary with simple email encryption.
Certain organizations (e.g. journalists, unions, activists, etc) have a responsibility to transmit sensitive messages securely and currently do not always do this. Don’t think what does this one email say about me? (or its recipient) think rather when examined on mass over time (most emails are stored indefinitely these days) what does this reveal about the way we live? This was pointed out by Ed Snowden, NSA Whistleblower, (click to hear him in his own words),that everyone needs to worried about security as at a future point with a database of this size anyone’s communications could be misconstrued by a goverment or corpration many years after an idle comment online is made.
When you use a website (like Facebook, Gmail) to send a message you have little to no control at all over the delivery process, it’s like asking someone you’ve not met to go and read your postcard loudly near the front door of your mate’s house!
Still not convinced? See this brilliant summary.(on autistici.org)
The workshop will begin with a short (5 minutes) explanation on why email encryption ought to be common place, followed by instruction on the use of enigmail add-on for Thunderbird that makes using GPG (the encryption program) easy.
The aim is to by the end of the workshop be able to email anyone else who makes it to the workshop without the email being interceptable by a third party.
It would save time if you had Thunderbird setup and receiving your emails. If you have ubuntu or another linux, please run “sudo apt-get install gpg thunderbird ” in the terminal. If you already use email encryption and want to help or share your key please come by too.
