How to remain secure against NSA surveillance
1) Hide in the network. Implement hidden services. Use Tor to anonymize yourself.SKETCHY ADVICE. Tor might make targeted attacks on you personally take more work, but because Tor attempts to provide anonymity and not confidentiality or integrity, it may make you more susceptible to dragnet surveillance.2) Encrypt your communications. Use TLS. Use IPsec.Great advice. But prefer TLS to IPsec, which is largely the provenance of commercial systems and the product of much more vendor-centric standardization.3) Assume that while your computer can be compromised, it would take work and risk on the part of the NSA – so it probably isn't.Sure, I guess.4) Be suspicious of commercial encryption software, especially from large vendors.Absolutely, great advice.5) Try to use public-domain encryption that has to be compatible with other implementations.This starts out great. This sentence is great. It continues:Prefer symmetric cryptography over public-key cryptography.Dead on, absolutely. Number-theoretic public-key crypto is terrifying. But then:Prefer conventional discrete-log-based systems over elliptic-curve systems; the latter have constants that the NSA influences when they can.ARGH NO ARGH. First, conventional DLP systems also have suspect parameters. Second, the best ECC systems have parameters of well-known provenance. Third, ECC systems are known to be stronger than DLP systems. In fact, the most likely source of any claim about an NSA cryptographic breakthrough is that NSA has a viable attack on RSA-1024 (an IFP system, but six of one).If you were going to change one thing about the way you decrypted in the wake of today's "new information", make it be that you abandon RSA.