6 Tips for Protecting Your Communications From Prying Eyes

[Commentary] Here are some ways to keep your communications private. While these tips were designed for journalists and confidential sources, they're just as useful for protecting any private communications, such as a conversation between family members, or a confidential business dealing. The key is to figure out your communication strategy. First, decide if you are trying to hide WHO you are talking to (metadata) or WHAT you are talking about (content), or BOTH. In each case, there are both high-tech and low-tech ways to evade surveillance.

If you are trying to mask WHO you are talking to, consider three tactics that I call ACE -- which stands for "Add Noise, Cloak or Evade."

• Add noise means fuzzing the metadata by adding false connections or false content to the communications.
• Cloak means using alternate identities.
• Evade means avoiding metadata collection.

If you are trying to mask WHAT you are talking about, I suggest three strategies that I call HEM -- which stands for "Hide, Encrypt or Mask."

• Hide means hiding the existence of the content, by placing it in a secret compartment either physically or digitally.
• Encrypt means to make content unreadable to outsiders using cryptographic techniques.
• Mask means disguising the content as an innocuous other type of content.