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These people were prompted to create a easy, secure email service. They incorporated in Switzerland as it has much more stringent privacy laws than we have in America.

Great find! At some point this semester, we're all going to learn how to use encrypted email. We might try out a few different systems, including ProtonMail, and compare them.

To any future college students: Be careful of what you type on the internet or reveal about yourself in an online forum. Despite the shocking revelations of the size and scope of the government's surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden, the majority of Americans don't understand the kind of information the government has on them, have taken few steps to protect their online data, and believe that such programs don't go far enough in tackling terrorism. Ironically, these same Americans also overwhelmingly believe that consumers have lost protection of their data to companies who have used their clients' privacy as a commodity. I would advise you to be careful of what you post online, and follow a few steps, such as passwords, encryption, and clearing your cookies, to help protect at least some of your data online and allow you to remain private. These programs continue to this day, and it's important that you protect what little privacy remains.

What are the mechanisms behind surveillance? How precisely are people surveilled in the US?

Quote: What you are looking at is one of the many undersea cables that carries inside it, to put it simply, the magic of the Internet. This particular cable, which runs aground on the coast of Florida, has been tapped by the NSA according to Paglen's research. Paglen, an artist who has been documenting the physical footprint of surveillance for years, got scuba-certified in order to go diving "at several locations off the coast of Florida," he says, to find and photograph the cables.

Here's a podcast interview with Bill Binney and Ladar Levison, both featured in Citizenfour. Binney was the former NSA crypto expert we saw testifying in the film a couple of times, and Levison was the guy who ran the secure email service Lavabit that he felt compelled to shut down.

We need to really pay attention to how many different apps and resources we have connected to big sites like facebook, and google. Heck, Apple as a whole essentially has our entire lives on record. Don't link everything to facebook or google, and maybe consider diversifying your technology.

Companies don't require a warrant to conduct data searches of their customers. The safest way to ensure that your data remains private while using services from a company is to use client based end to end encryption.

Ladar Levison and William Binney each paid the price for a moral stand against the U.S. government. And your digital privacy is slightly better for it.

Gives you tools to make sure your information is safe.

One word of caution: This piece is from 2012, before we learned what the NSA was up to. It's quite possible that some of these mechanisms are now known to be insecure.

Here's a recent interview with security expert Bruce Schneier.

"Latest on the computer analyst whistleblower who provided the Guardian with top-secret NSA documents leading to revelations about US surveillance on phone and internet communications" - compilation of news sources on Edward Snowden

Hey, look, the British are reading our emails, too...

A breakdown of the bill of rights and how much each amendment has been given up to the government. Pretty terrifying.

This article talks about the want for greater government surveillance after the Paris attacks. It mentions that since Edward Snowden released information about the NSA's digital surveillance power, a lot of measures have been taken to restrict government surveillance. However, since the Paris attacks, the US government is pushing to bring that power back.

Because Snowden wrote it

Good article about lawful deciphers for "better" security