Every day we surf the web, send messages, chat and email. But do you know these things alone are enough for you to get tracked?

Do you remember Edward Snowden ? The NSA whistleblower who couldn't take it anymore when he realised that NSA was spying on the internet activity of people.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden doesn't yet
know whether he'll be spending the next year in a
U.S. prison or an undisclosed location in Russia .
Nevertheless, Snowden hopes to work on anti-
surveillance technologies in the future.
During a nearly 90-minute discussion at the
Hackers on Planet Earth Conference (HOPE) on
Saturday, in which Snowden participated via
Google Hangouts, the whistle blower said he wants
to work on tools that help people better protect
their privacy.

"I think we the people— you the people, you in this
room right now, have both the means and the
capability to help build a better future by encoding
our rights into the programs and protocols upon
which we rely every day," Snowden said. "And
that's what a lot of my future work is going to be
involved in, and I hope you'll join me."

Snowden didn't specify what shape his work would
take: Whether he would be involved with producing
code for new encryption and privacy-protecting
technologies, or whether he would focus on
promoting tools already under development for the
average user. Nevertheless, he had some definite
ideas about what kind of tools were needed to
protect an individual's privacy online.

"Generally, when I talk about this I say encryption.
I say encryption, encryption, encryption," Snowden
said. "Because it's an important first step that
denies the government access to anything more
typically than a suspicion, which is drawn from
association [metadata]."

Snowden then went on to reiterate that protecting
privacy doesn't end but only starts with
encryption. That's because encryption generally
doesn't protect metadata from prying eyes. Email
metadata, for example, could include the sender's
location, the sender and recipient's email address,
the recipient's location, the email's subject line,
the time the email was sent, and, over time, the
frequency and basic gist of two or more people's
communication.

All of that information can help investigators paint
a detailed picture of an individual and who they
associate with—even if all messages back and forth
are encrypted.
Towards the end of his call for action Snowden
also said that the user experience for encryption
tools needs to drastically improve, pointing a
finger at tools like GPG (Gnu Privacy Guard), a tool
based on OpenPGP, which is difficult to get
working. "It's damn near unusable," Snowden said.
There are already some projects at work on the
problems that Snowden pointed out. Lavabit
founder Ladar Levison, for example, is at work on
Dark Mail , an email protocol that aims to obscure
email metadata. Other email projects such as the
browser plug-in Mailvelope and the crowdsourced
Mailpile project that is currently in Alpha mode are
focused on making encryption easier.
Snowden has some very clear ideas of the tools
that are needed, and would be a strong
spokesperson for getting people onboard with
user-friendly privacy tools. However, with
Snowden's extended asylum request in Russia still
pending, his chance to help create a more
privacy-friendly future is far from certain.

Source: www.pcworld.com/article/2456223/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-plans-to-work-on-easy-to-use-privacy-tools.html