For real your cellphone and your computer should 100% NOT be backing up your photo storage or anything else to any variety of icloud or onedrive.
I'm aware that in some ways I'm a weird luddite but this is one of the major, major problems that I have with so much of the modern technology landscape existing as tools that allow you to access your data rather than tools which allow you to store your data.
Look at the data that you have. Look at what you are storing. Ask yourself "if the internet stopped working tomorrow, would I be able to access this information?"
If the answer is "no" you have 2 problems:
1 - You don't actually have that information and can easily lose access to it.
2 - You may not know who DOES have access to that information. If it's encrypted storage you're probably somewhat secure, but IS it encrypted storage? Or is it stored in plaintext on someone else's server?
So my deal with the EARN IT Act is that I don't super duper trust any of our government systems to do fuck all. I think it's worthwhile to contact your representatives, but I don't know that it will actually DO anything.
However YOU can do something.
If you don't want your data accessible to companies that will scan it and test it and pass it on to the government, don't give those companies your data.
Store things locally. Learn how to send and share encrypted files. If you have to store things online, store them with encryption that *you* have set up.
Honestly I'm pretty sure this is going to be bad. I'm pretty sure there are going to be significant security compromises as a result of the EARN IT Act and that we're going to get so buried in breached data that it's going to fundamentally alter how we have to identify ourselves in ways that will be more difficult to use while making people easier to track.
It's shit, and I hate it, and the internet is getting smaller and more fenced in and the big fun platforms that were easy to use and that let people of all technical skill levels share and collaborate that we had a couple decades to explore are now things that will just be a means of exploitation.
It fuckin' blows, friends.
But it also means that NOW is the time to fundamentally re-think how you interact with the internet. Ask yourself how you send data, and where you keep it. Ask yourself who has your information and how it is secured. Ask yourself what would happen if someone who hated you had access to your primary email account for a day, and ask yourself how you would try to fix what they fucked up.
EARN IT sucks, but this is NOT one of those instances in which you are helpless if it passes. Right now, before it passes, talk to the non-internet people in your life about why it is bad:
- It will mean that the government can see all your stored files - It will mean the websites you store files on will not be allowed to encrypt those files - It will mean that any asshole hacker who can access those systems can access all that data that will now be unencrypted.
This shitty act will make EVERYONE who uses the websites that are subject to the EARN IT act more vulnerable to data breaches, ID theft, and exploitation from hackers while ALSO enabling effortless surveillance by our own government.
This is bad, so tell your relatives and friends and co-workers to tell their representatives WHY it is bad by using this site: https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-act-to-save-our-privacy
The site is very easy to use and literally you do not even have to navigate to a separate page to contact your representatives.
And in case that doesn't work, in case it passes anyway, ask yourself what you're doing. Ask yourself who has your data. Ask yourself who can see what you've stored online, and learn what you need to do to make sure the answer is "*I* own my data, and I control who has access to it."
Hey also: get used to a slow internet again.
It sucks trying to use a site like Tumblr or Twitter through a VPN or on TOR. It's slow and terrible because they are BIG sites moving a lot of data.
It's maybe time to start setting up email lists and forums for the people you want to be in touch with. Make sure that you don't only know your online friends through their social media profiles, but have other ways of contacting the people you care about.
If tumblr went down *today*, right now, who would you be able to find elsewhere on the internet and who would you lose forever? If discord got taken down tomorrow, is there somewhere else online that you'd be able to tell a friend who you are?
Pretend it's 1995, pretend you've got rudimentary internet access, because if EARN IT passes I think that's kind of what we're going to have to go back to - especially if you're engaged in any kind of activism or any activity that is frowned-upon by most of society.
No despairing on my posts, only radicalizing.
If you want to take action here are some things that you can do TODAY that will make you less vulnerable to these sorts of harms:
Create an account on Cryptpad.Fr - Cryptpad is an open-source, zero knowledge collaboration tool that is an excellent browser-based replacement for Gsuite. It doesn't have app support, but it is a really fantastic tool to work on shared documents in a secure way. You don't even have to have an account to access and work on a document. Free accounts come with 1GB of personal storage; this is actually a LOT of storage if you're keeping in good practice of storing your important files locally rather than online. It's also a great free, non-google, non-microsoft office suite that is more portable than Libre Office. If you do have the funds to support them as well as creating an account, please consider it.
Create a ProtonMail account. Protonmail is an end-to-end encrypted email service based in Switzerland that allows you to create free accounts with a limited amount of storage. Please note: while ProtonMail has zero-knowledge storage, they can be compelled to produce the user information that they have access to, including login and IP address data. If you need to make sure that no one knows you're logging in to protonmail you need to log in through an anonymizer like TOR.
Learn how to use TOR - which is very easy; it's pretty much like just using any other browser. Download it, install it, poke around a bit, and do some light-weight browsing. People think it's scary because it's something that hackers use and that governments yell about; it's not. It's also not ideal for day-to-day use, but it's good to already have it running when you need it instead of scrambling to use it in a panic if the EARN IT act passes.
Start using a password manager. If there is nothing else from this list that you do today, this is the one thing you should do. The other stuff can wait until later, but if the internet may soon be less secure as a result of EARN IT, the very least that you can do is secure your logins. Bitwarden is a free, portable, exceptionally functional Open Source password manager that has wonderful resources on its website that teach people at all skill levels how to effectively use the product. Please, Please, Please, PLEASE as the random ass hacker-type person in your life I am *BEGGING* you to use a password manager. And Bitwarden is free, but if you get the paid version for $10 a year you can get encrypted file storage and sending tools as a part of the package. Learning how to create and send encrypted files can be confusing and frightening for people who haven't done it before. It is VERY easy with Bitwarden and they have a lot of accessible info teaching you how to use that tool.
The time has come for us to all become badass security nerds, friends. These are the first little steps and the nice thing is that they are very easy steps that will take you a long way toward being more secure online.
