It is very important for all Internet survivalist and militia members to understand that
regular e-mail is absolutely insecure. Without encryption, the entire Internet e-mail
system is like a worldwide bulletin board. Almost any e-mail can be read by many people
other than who it is sent to.

How insecure is Internet e-mail?

Regular Internet e-mail is notoriously insecure and offers no privacy. Typical e-mail
travels through lots of Internet computers. The administrators of these computers can
read, copy and store any relayed e-mail. Some big governments and organizations
routinely intercept e-mail and scan it for interesting words or phrases. An example of
this would be the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Carnivore software
implementation. The Carnivore system is a Microsoft Windows-based workstation with
packet-sniffing software placed at Internet Service Providers (ISP’s).

The likes of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Security Agency (NSA) are monitoring Internet traffic 24 hours a day. People who value privacy should feel uncomfortable and do something to protect themselves.

PGP is such a great tool for this purpose.

Why should PGP be used?

For the uninitiated, PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy. It is a very good encryption
program for files and e-mail. It uses something called "public key" cryptography where
your encryption key is split into a "public" key and a "private" key. You keep the
private key and pass out the “public key” to whomever you wish to have secure
communications with.

Anyone who can intercept your e-mail can alter your e-mail's content. Even worse, anyone
can send e-mail that looks as if it was sent by you. With PGP, you can digitally sign
your e-mail. When your e-mail and signature is received, PGP can be used to verify that
the message is unaltered, and from you.

This program is our default security standard for alerts and e-mail contact with the
public at large.

We expect all militia members and patriots who value their privacy and wish to stay in
the loop will download it and learn how to use it.

Why don't you always send your paper mail on postcards without using envelopes?

Sending your mail through computers is even less confidential than sending the same
material on a postcard. PGP provides secure envelopes that protect your privacy.

E-mail messages are too easy to intercept and scan. This can be done easily, routinely,
automatically, and undetectably on a grand scale. PGP empowers people to take their
privacy into their own hands.

Your first step in contacting the Connecticut Survivalist Alliance (CSA) should be to
e-mail us your Public PGP key.

During the 1990s, the NSA was frequently in court trying to keep PGP off the market.
In the 1980s, the NSA was trying to get the key length of commercial ciphers kept
shorter than business wanted.

Although the NSA never admitted it, most cryptography experts believed the NSA wanted to
keep longer keys out of use, because the NSA did not have powerful enough techniques, or
computers at the time, to crack longer keys.

The security of an encryption system depends upon a lot more than the encryption
algorithms used. We use the RSA cipher which some consider infeasible, but security
depends upon the user, weak passphrases (passwords) are the most common weakness.

Using any passphrase that's ever been published is the inexperienced users first
mistake.

Cracking PGP is extremely easy if this is done.

The NSA as well as many organizations such as ourselves use dictionary attacks and can
also bruteforce the “key”, which is a string of letters and numbers.

Use an older version of PGP, (before the NSA interest, and suspected algorithms of
current versions) and use at least a 2048 bit RSA Key generated by using a completely
random passphrase (never been in any published book).

Currently there is no "invulnerable" encryption" method.
Human apathy is the biggest weakness.

The CSA offers these resources for individuals to secure their e-mail in contacting us.

A pre-NSA interested versions of PGP 6.5.8ckt can be downloaded for FREE at:

http://www.digivill.net/~iirg/PGPFW658Win32.zip
This version works on XP only and not on Vista

CSA Illustrated PGP Innstallation Tutorial

http://www.digivill.net/~iirg/pgptut.htm