Gmail Chat Monitoring

gmail chat uses you e-mail client and is no more and no less secure as you e-mail and/or IRC clients, or any other instant message client. It is nothing more or less than a chat client. Since I use Linux, I am less worried with viruses that can be transmitted by chat clients, but I think google does a rather good job of protecting us from malware. It is best that the mail remain on their server and not in your machine. If you want to hide some things you say, forget it, it is on record, law enforcement and some others have ways to access it.

If you want secure communication among people that regularly correspond with each other I expect you can find a peer to peer chat program with PGP or some other method of public key encryption to use.

In these times of concern about security using one may draw more attention than one gets talking in the open. Right or wrong there are lots of paranoid people out there. Just because their paranoid it doesn't mean some one not out to get them.

If you want private conversations don't use the internet. Don't chat on your bosses nickel if not about something that make money for him. You made a deal to rent your services to him every day. If you want to do well give him his money's worth. If you don't think your getting paid enough rent take hard look and see if your doing enough work to be worth it. Don't judge what your worth by what others are paid judge it by how much you make the company. It is lot easier to ask for a raise if you can document you made the company $800,000 last year and are getting paid less than the guy that only made the $400,000. Not that he makes $110,000 and you make $95,000.

Gordon

Well said.

The most feared words now are: "My name is Chris Hansen, and I'm with Dateline NBC . ."

Let me tell you a REAL story. Big brother listens to all mobile phone calls, all email, all faxes and all normal phone calls . . . even this email I'm writing now. When Clinton put sanctions on Sudan 10 or 15 years ago, I was calling Khartoum once a week for an oil project. 2 days after sanctions, the FBI knocked on my door and took me away for questioning. From the mouth of Special Agent X, the long story short is that there is a super site in Puerto Rico that 'listens' to everything, millions of communications per second. The computers screen out key 'words' or data bits and those go to a list, then if repeated to another list, and another until finally a pattern is realised and a short list is developed for listening by a person. Then you get a knock on the door.

If you don't believe me, start emailing a bunch of what you might feel are the best key words that would assure you a visit by next week. Or, start saying them on a cell phone consistently. Uhhh . . . but I bet you don't.

By the way, I passed my interview and when it was all done and I told the agent all the wrong things she was doing during our talk they offered to hire me to teach young agents how to interview suspects !

Very true but not only Puerto Rico they are all over the world. When I was living in NZ ther was one not far from me and I understand they monoitor all phones fax transmissions emails etc for their list of key words. They caught some terrorists in the nineties in Wellington who wher plotting against Australia. They were staying in a motel and for security using a pay phone up the road to talk to their associates. Goes to show the only secure way to send information is post. I am not sure about that either. However as long as you are not a terrorist or a crminal you have nothing to worry about

Perhaps you think your E-mail is legitimate enough that encryption is unwarranted. If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, then why don't you always send your paper mail on postcards? Why not submit to drug testing on demand? Why require a warrant for police searches of your house? Are you trying to hide something? You must be a subversive or a drug dealer if you hide your mail inside envelopes. Or maybe a paranoid nut. Do law-abiding citizens have any need to encrypt their E-mail? What if everyone believed that law-abiding citizens should use postcards for their mail? If some brave soul tried to assert his privacy by using an envelope for his mail, it would draw suspicion. Perhaps the authorities would open his mail to see what he's hiding. Fortunately, we don't live in that kind of world, because everyone protects most of their mail with envelopes. So no one draws suspicion by asserting their privacy with an envelope. There's safety in numbers. Analogously, it would be nice if everyone routinely used encryption for all their E-mail, innocent or not, so that no one drew suspicion by asserting their E-mail privacy with encryption. Think of it as a form of solidarity. If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy. Intelligence agencies have access to good cryptographic technology. So do the big arms and drug traffickers. So do defense contractors, oil companies, and other corporate giants. But ordinary people and grassroots political organizations mostly have not had access to affordable military grade public-key cryptographic technology. "However as long as you are not a terrorist or a criminal you have nothing to worry about"... So, what makes you a terrorist? Recent releases from the DHS point fingers at those at "tea parties", which may have Ron Paul Bumper stickers, or wave flags that say "dont tread on me", believe in pro life, think the economy will crash, etc. etc. under the general term of "right wing extremism".