Build Date: Thu Nov 21 13:00:14 2024 UTC

Oh, oh, oh, the despair. Will I ever be kewl in Master Squid's eyes!
-- Patient Joab

Let GNU Privacy Guard Cover Your Ass

by Mr. Bad

1999-08-12 10:40:36

d00d, you HAVE to get GPG! The Age of Encryption is here! If you don't get some GPG, your VIRTUAL ASS will be hanging out in the WIND!

OK, so, here's Mr. Bad's 200 word take on encryption in general and GPG in particular: it is time for you to PANIC! All kinds of data you have, like email and files and shit like that, are FLYING through the AETHER or lying around on SOMEONE ELSE'S MACHINE! ISPs and employers are NOTORIOUS for going into your files and mail at RANDOM TIMES, just to check up on you! Like those bad things you said about drugs and guns, THEY'RE LOOKING AT THAT RIGHT NOW!

And they turn over for the COPS like THAT! Imagine I just snapped my fingers, because that's how fast they turn over! In the snap of a finger! Oh, and if the cops have a warrant, they can SEIZE YOUR COMPUTER and just go fishing around on your hard drive until they find something INCRIMINATING. FUCK!

The essence of this is that YOU ARE BEING WATCHED. You may already be highly SCREWED.

Now, people like the EFF tell you to temper your speech and consider all the stuff you put on the Internet as public. But what kind of BULLSHIT is that? Fuck that! I don't want to temper myself, and I don't want to get screwed by bad authority figures and wimpy buttboy ISPs. THAT'S WHY YOU GOTTA have some ENCRYPTION.

Encryption = fussing up your files and email so only the people who are supposed to be able to read them can read them. You get a program for encrypting shit, and then you encrypt it, and it looks like gibberish. Then you send the gibberish to someone, and they unencrypt it, and then they can see the shit, and COOL. Encryption is GOOD JUJU.

The technology has been around for a while, but very bad people like the FBI and the NSA and the RSA folks have been keeping people from getting good encryption technology through crazy-ass things like export control and patent suits and so forth. And the best crypto package, PGP, has been bought by a weirdo company, who's way in bed with the Feds, and they're pretty screwy in a lot of ways, and the software's proprietary, and the source is hard to get, and just fuck it.

But no MORE! Now there's a very cool crypto program, GnuPG, that's FREE SOFTWARE, meaning that you get the SOURCE CODE and the compiled program, and you can give it to WHOEVER YOU WANT. And it doesn't cost nothing. GPG is REALLY BITCHEN. I highly recommend that you check it out TODAY!

Over.  End of Story.  Go home now.

quintuplet@pigdog.org

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