In 1993 I was in highschool and taking a creative writing class. Today I discovered a piece of that writing and it made me laugh and cry at the same time. Here’s an excerpt:
It is the year 2013 in the United states of Europe. […]
Al: “I haven’t seen [Ralph] for a long time. He just sent me a message over the network yesterday that he needed help with a project or so and I thought it would be nice to have him over.” […]
Al to Ralph: “So how are you? What did you do all these years since the Big Hack?”
Ralph: “I was traveling through Europe from one Network to another, I worked for one of the big spacetravelagencies (1) for a while.” […]
Ralph: “All right, listen! I told you that I needed help. I didn’t tell you though what I needed help for. I have had some problems with the SNC – the Secret Network Control (2) – recently and I need to leave Europe as fast as possible. […] It was quite a shock for me, too, to find out the government was watching me night and day. I came to your backdoor because I thought they might have followed me here […] they are want to arrest me because I wrote some articles they didn’t like and I managed to publish them in popular magazines. This government is so corrupt and no one even notices but I made them notice.” […]
[… follows a discussion how they can help Ralph escape …]
Al: “Come on there must be a way. The government can’t control everything, there is something like privacy and DataProtection in this country. And the police can’t be in every little network just because they suspect somebody of doing something.”
Ralph: “If you think so, please. But I tell you, I know what I am speaking of. ” (3)
(1) yeah right I was wrong about the space travel agencies … so what 😉
(2) how could I know they would call it Prism?
(3) the piece does not have a happy ending!
Really 2013! It would be even more fitting if I’d named the character Julian or Edward.
So today I finally found a way to encrypt email conversations in gmail. Check out mailvelope. I didn’t think it was – but it is! – possible to encrypt mails in a comfortable way when using a webmail UI! (For the Thunderbird users there’s always been enigmail so there really is no excuse!)
Even if you think you don’t have anything to hide, it’s still not ok for the government (or whoever really controls these agencies) to read your private stuff! (read this)
But I can’t encrypt my email if you don’t have a key, too. So please get one!