With the unending dilution of civil rights on the internet I have become increasingly concerned at what this means for personal freedom and the right to express oneself.
I already had the unpleasant experience of a powerful interest group trying to force one of my websites off air resulting in me needing to locate that site on a server in Panama (where they have some great laws!).
Next year the British government is going live with a system to monitor all UK residents telephone calls, internet activities and email records and store them in a single database.
As part of this no prepay phones will be allowed in the UK any longer without registration. All phones will be traceable to the owner. I had an imaginary conversation with the government. It went like this:
Government: "So yeah .. you have a right to free speech as long as you tell us what you are saying and we're allowed to keep a fat database on you".
Me: "Go place an aubergine (eggplant) where the sun don't shine you anally retentive bunch of control freaks. That is not free speech. And my rights are my rights not yours to decide".
Government: "We don't like those ideas so we will just spy on you and invade your rights because we can".
Me: "In that case I will place my internet activity where the sun don't shine ".
And so the hunt began. First I was introduced to the Goldens VPN service and I made contact with them. Now I'm using one of their systems Cryptocloud.
The system uses a small java VPN client that sits in your in tray. Click on it to connect and now everything over the internet is routed through their private network and I pop up in Amsterdam with an unidentiifiable IP address.
The Dutch privacy laws are much better than the UK. And these guys will never cough up a client associated with any activity (except child porn and spammers who they hate and will track down and shut down).
Why won't they cough up your details? They can't. Their payment system is not linked to their operational system. It sends untraceable tokens that can not be linked back to the payer. The VPN tunnel is established over a 128 bit HTTPS connection with 1024 bit encryption for exchange of keys and encrypts traffic with 2048 bit encryption - these keys are changed on the fly every twenty minutes. Their server farm keeps NO LOGS of activity. There is not anything to trace.
Skype, MSN, webrowsing can and do all go through the client seamlessly (absolutely all internet traffic goes through the VPN). You can switch between protected and unprotected browsing at the click of a mouse.
Developed by an ecclectic bunch of Dutch folk in typical anarcho-Dutch style of freedomfighting these products offer you a little brother to keep big brother off your back and out of your internet life.
I'm probably switching all my calls to skype and buying a Dutch international skype option. That way my phone calls (already encrypted with Skype) will be further encrypted and not even emanate from the UK for the UK authorities to monitor.
Is there an overhead? Yes. It's a fee paying service of course. I'm finding my bandwidth cut by around 20% and ping times 100ms greater than without using the service so I wouldn't want to game with it. But I'm not a gamer.
Crazy B