Many readers have expressed their opposition to federal government Bill C-51. It is claimed that this bill will greatly infringe on the rights to privacy of ordinary citizens.
As a retired information systems control expert, I have always relied on secure information communication and storage technologies during my professional career and at present. Ordinary citizens can also use some of these highly reliable and secure technologies at little or no cost.
For example, the free “Thunderbird” e-mail client is open source and provides for many secure communication options that are not available on many other products.
By adding the free open source “Enigmail” and “GnuPG” privacy tools to Thunderbird, users can achieve communication security encryption and digital signature protocol that is stronger than what the banks use for their on-line accounts.
This open source software is much more secure than proprietary security software as the open source community will make sure that Big Brother does not install secret trap doors to gain access to your private encryption keys.
As an extra security measure, I embed my private keys within a uncompressed music CD. The public half of my encryption keys are posted openly and for free on international PGP key servers.
I have little to fear from Big Brother performing fishing expeditions among my private communications while I listen to my favourite music CD.
Anthonie den Boef
Nanoose Bay