Quick Takes: News You Can Use

Here's just a few short clips from recent news.  I think you might make good use of them.

Chile appears set to join those countries on the US Visa Waiver Program effective in 2014.  This allows visa-free entry to US for up to 90 days - just register online through ESTA.  This could be helpful to those considering Chilean citizenship, now that Chile has streamlined some new routes to immigration and possible citizenship.  For American citizens looking to Chilean citizenship with an eye to possible renunciation of their US citizenship, it means visa-free entry for those quick visits back to the US to visit friends and family, or wrap up business interests.  Chile seems more and more appealing as a place to live, work, launch a business, explore as a PT through South America, even immigrate.  Land of 21st Century opportunities.

Complaints about TSA employees' unethical conduct and worse are up 26%.  More and more travelers are seeking routings which avoid the US.  For example, one American man with lots of international business interests hops from Mexico City to Vancouver when heading from Latin America to Asia.  He heads from Latin America to Europe through Brazil to Portugal and onward.  He claims it's worth a bit of extra expense to avoid transiting any US airport - even though he's a US citizen.  Consider planning your travels to avoid transiting the US, too.  What woman wants to be groped in public?

Still need help securing your personal info against PRISM and other malfeasance, invasions of privacy, risks to your safety and security?  Check out this "Black Paper" on digital privacy by Simon Black, privacy maven, inveterate PT, international business expert.  Loaded with excellent tips to protect yourself, your identity, your communications, especially while traveling. 

May your road rise to meet you, fellow Road Warrioress!
Ann

If You Want More Privacy. . .

Since the explosive revelations last month regarding PRISM, NSA's monumental worldwide invasion of communications privacy, people are changing a lot of computer habits.  Goodbye google, hello StartPage.  The number of queries on the DuckDuckGo search engine doubled in less than three weeks.  Cryptocat's volume doubled within that time.

Steven Spielberg's Minority Report is alive and well and living in the White House, in NSA, and in their inconceivably voluminous facility under construction in Utah.  It's worse than Orwellian.  1984 might have been the wrong date, but certainly the right prescient track.

Here are some changes you can make to your internet habits:

DuckDuckGo does not store personally identifiable information about search queries on its servers. You can see exactly how your Google search information is saved and sold, thanks to DuckDuckGo's simple diagram found on its website: http://donttrack.us/.  Check out duckduckgo.com.

StartPage is a non-US based third-party search engine. When you search with StartPage, they remove all the identifying information from your online query and then submit it anonymously to Google themselves. They get the results and give them to you, keeping your information completely private. Your IP address is never stored… your visit is not logged and they don’t place any tracking cookies on your browser.  They make it clear on their website that anyone seeking to subpoena data on users can forget it - there is no data!  Set StartPage as your homepage!  Simply go to startpage.com.

You can keep your intranet chats private by using Cryptocat. This site encrypts all of its users’ messages so that notes between you and family, friends, colleagues or employees stay off the radar.  It might not be available for all browsers, but check out https://crypto.cat/

Besides governments which copy your inbox, hackers, identity thieves, advertisers, and others are after your personal information.  An offshore email account is not free, though the fees are generally reasonable.  Here are some reputable, relatively inexpensive options to consider.

http://www.SwissMail.org/ Based in Switzerland.

http://www.neomailbox.net/ Based in Switzerland.

https://secure.runbox.com/ Based in Norway, which has strong privacy laws. Runbox is generally considered a cheap and quality option.

https://www.jumpshipservices.co/ Parent company is incorporated in Hong Kong with servers located in Switzerland. JumpShip Services - Jumpmail - www.jumpshipservices.co/jumpmail
 

Instead of a US-based cloud storage or data storage company such as DropBox or Google, consider free alternatives based in a friendlier jurisdiction.  Perhaps the best offshore data storage option is Switzerland-based Wuala. Wuala encrypts and stores your files on servers in Switzerland and offers 5 GB of free storage space.

More to come on some easy-to-access, easy-to-use alternatives for the Road Warrioress!

May your road rise to meet you (without spies)!
Ann