> Sure. Use Chrome + best practices.
If you care about your privacy your best bet is Firefox, not Chrome
You say that, but having switched to DuckDuckGo[1] for the past few weeks I'm slowly but surely losing my reliance on Google for personal stuff. Sure, it's not as good as Google in terms of finding relevant results or having the rest of the ecosystem, but it's no worse than using the web a few years ago, which to me is good enough (and I make some pretty esoteric searches).
I'm looking further into moving away from the traditional Internet to something a bit more self-hosted and it looks possible.
About a year or so ago I was using DuckDuckGo for every search, but after a couple months switched back after falling into the habit of following almost every DDG search with another one on Google to make sure I was getting the real results.
Frustratingly, where DDG failed most was on the generic stuff where I expected to find results on the bigger sites. Esoteric searches are harder to judge, as neither engine reliably presented what I'd consider high-confidence results on first query.
Everyone you converse with via email still uses Gmail.
Game over.
I get the whole keeping it for later decryption bit but really, 4096 bit RSA is not going to be easily borked no matter what scale of computing power you throw at it.
Syncdocs http://syncdocs.com does Google Drive encryption at rest with AES256, however, who knows if the NSA has already cracked AES?
> 1. Sign up to relevant pressure groups
Ok, I like this one. No reason not to. Support the EFF.
> 2. Install HTTPS Everywhere
Since I believe that the NSA likely already have all of the relevant private keys, I'm not sure about this one. HTTPS is still better than no HTTPS, but don't overestimate it.
> 3. Install Adblock Plus
Yep ok. Making it harder to be tracked across the internet is good.
> 4. Review my browser use
Sure. Use Chrome + best practices.
> 5. Review web services I use and switch if necessary
Suddenly this appears: a catch-all "change everything I do on the internet". Stop using Facebook, Skype, Gmail, etc. Probably not going to happen. I'll come back to this in a second.
> 6. Download and Use Tor
Given my belief that the government is probably running enough nodes to reconstruct Tor identities, I'm not convinced that this helps much.
> 7. Use the Onion Browser on my mobile
See #6.
> 8. Run "host-proof" Web applications
This is an extension of #5. I like the idea, but this is hard. Startups like Ciphercloud and Social Fortress are ostensibly working on it; I look forward to when they're available. I imagine that if any significant percentage of people start using, say, Social Fortress on Facebook, Facebook will make it against the TOS.
I do think that the NSA has probably broken RSA. It's notable that they haven't approved it for securing classified data, despite the fact that it would significantly simplify the DOD's current pains around key distribution. This, of course, takes SSL with it, but importantly takes PGP, too. Running GPGMail on a desktop isn't enough.
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My privacy plan will involve learning more about politics. Who are our representatives? What districts play disproportionate roles here? How are the oversight committees formed? Who's on them and why? What can we do to be involved? This is a much longer timescale play -- it's a lifetime of being involved, rather than a quick technological fix now. I'm not confusing a personal interest here with having influence -- I'm just one person, and not a high-profile one, and alone I won't have much impact. But, I don't believe that there's any substitute for a politically engaged constituency.
I don't believe that Washington is fundamentally corrupt or irreversibly damaged. In the Snowden video he spoke about how these decisions are viewed as policy and not law -- so a future president may decide to go off the deep end into despotism. But since it's still policy, there are systems for this. It's not ok to simply complain that the system will defend itself and there's nothing you can do. Apply the same mindset that drives you through the multiple brick walls that are a startup to changing Washington.