As our modern age sees continuing advances in technology, it also sees continuing opportunities for attack on our personal liberties, as well as actual attacks. Our society (in the United States) was founded upon certain inalienable rights. Included in these rights was that of privacy .

The right of privacy goes to the heart of all of the other rights, and preventing the government interfering with them. Thus, privacy actually represents the state to be held most dearly of all those expressed and implied by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Unfortunately, the right of privacy has been under ever increasing assault for the past few decades, and the attack increases every day. This page is dedicated to informing about privacy and security rights and issues.

Part One: "Know Your Customer" (KYC)

Now the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is trying to get into the "Big Brother Business". Under the guise of combatting money laundering, they want your bank to determine what are your "usual" transactions, and report any "unusual" transactions to them! (The following information is excerpted from an eMail message sent by Defend Your Privacy .)

Defend Your Privacy is working against this effort. So far (7 March 1999), the FDIC had logged over 140,000 comments opposed to KYC, with only 20 , in favor, and they still have stacks of uncounted mail and eMail.

In addition, United States Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) has introduced into the House Judiciary and Banking Committees a bill called the Know Your Customer Sunset Act (HR 516). If passed, this act would prevent agencies like the FDIC from imposing regulations like the KYC regulations. Support for this bill is growing very quickly, garnering 40 co-sponsorships, including influential members like Tom Delay (the Majority Whip) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde. In addition, Representative Paul has introduced HR 518, The Bank Secrecy Sunset Act.

Part Two: Bank Secrecy Act Compliance Manual

The FDIC finally dropped their efforts on the "Know Your Customer" program, at least as a frontal assault, in the face of stiff opposition from Congress. Unfortunately, through the vehicle of the "Bank Secrecy Act Compliance Manual", they have managed to get the vast majority of the KYC program implemented in nearly 90% of banks. Assistant Director of the Federal Reserve Richard Small, has stated publicly that KYC is not dead, but needs to be "repackaged".

My PGP Key Information

Phil Zimmerman has done us all a great service. First by putting his Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software into the public domain, and second by standing up to the United States government when they got bent out of shape about PGP. Hats off to Phil. In fact, Phil's truculence helped light the fuse on the righteous indignation that has fueled the current initiatives to reduce, and hopefully eliminate, restrictions on export of cryptography from the United States. The fact of the matter is that the technology is already outside the U.S. in a big way, and all these regulations do is to reduce the ability of U.S. companies to compete in the global market.

A critical component of privacy is the security of your communications. Phil's made it a lot easier for us to maintain the privacy of our communications. Now all we have to do is get our keys distributed broadly enough that finding someone's key doesn't remain the major issue in sending them a secure message. To help this along, I'm including all of my PGP key information on this page, as well as registering it on publicly-available key servers. I'll list the key servers I've used in a minute, but first, my key information. Mine is a 1024-bit key, and it is:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: 2.6.2

mQCNAzFZ1tIAAAEEAMDl90fz+e0a6J8Z3NcT/y0vaKNpZFsL5jdFZuNjGFOqE3sq
ZNoue9efgqKC0umg80Bo4NuRUZ7h0zsHhTOmCa2mlQHNFFCI03C6vmKvWh3biMaB
03bBhpad/P7l0G0qjfr0BEZU/71rAgRKZFPA1JXchrNlsFR4d14elGKBS3y9AAUR
tCpEb3VnbGFzIE4uIEZyYW5rbGluIDxmcmFua2xpbkBhbWVyaWNhLm5ldD4=
=bG08
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

The PGP Key ID for this key is 814B7CBD (eight - one - four - Bravo - seven - Charlie - Bravo - Delta). The PGP Fingerprint for this key is: A8 E0 39 6D 64 BC E5 8A   A6 5D 58 8F FE A6 A7 FD

PGP Key Servers

• PGP Public Keyservers
• BAL's PGP Public Key Server (at MIT)
• MIT PGP Keyserver

PGP Information

• International PGP Home Page
• PGP FAQs
• SLED Corporation Certifies PGP Keys
• MIT distribution site for PGP
• Pretty Good Privacy
• PGP -- Pretty Good Privacy
• SLED Corporation Certifies PGP Keys
• PGP Resource Page
• alt.security.pgp newsgroup
• PGP for Red Hat Linux
• PGP Inc.
• PGP Attack FAQ
• PGP Resources on the Web

Newsgroups

• alt.security
• alt.security.pgp
• alt.privacy
• alt.privacy.anon-server
• alt.society.civil-liberties
• alt.society.civil-liberty

Web Sites

• Yahoo's Security and Encryption Index
• Bacard's Privacy Page
• Our Rights
• Cryptography Policy
• Steganography
• Steganography Info and Archive
• Quadralay Cryptography Archive
• MailAnon