The Sydney Morning Herald reported three days ago on a new law that will allow the interception of anyone’s email if they have been in contact with a current suspect. This person, referred to as the B-party (the prime suspect is the A-party, I imagine) will not only have email to the A-party intercepted, but all email.
And all anyone needs to say is that it’s “likely to assist [in obtaining intelligence] related to security”. Vague enough for any politician’s conscience.
What can we do to protect our privacy? We can encrypt all our email. I certainly will be encrypting as much email as I can to friends and colleagues that support GPG encoded email.
I also extend out this offer to anyone who cares to take it up. I will install and configure GPG on your system and integrate it with a mail client so you too can start protecting your privacy. I will help you create a public/private key pair and show you how to read and write encrypted email.
This offer comes with no guarantee that I can get GPG working on your system or with your preferred mail client, but if you’re using Outlook Express, you really should think about changing a few habits anyway :)