Wiretap This!

Update, 4/13/2009 - We had so hoped that we'd be able to let this site die, with Obama taking office.
Alas, he's let us down, in a huge way, on this most important issue. The new administration is claiming even more rights for the government than Bush! Now, more than ever, it's crucial for the citizenry of the US to protest this illegal violation of our right to privacy! President Obama, this is hypocrisy! What happened to your campaign pledges? What happened to your honor? You are a constitutional scholar, or have you forgotten that already?

Your email is being read by the National Security Agency. There is no longer any doubt of this. Since your email is being illegally read by some agency, would you like to send them a message? In a way that almost guarantees that they'll see it? That's where we come in!

The purpose of this site is to allow you to turn any message you'd like to send into a block of encrypted text that's very likely to get their attention. We take your text and give it back to you very weakly encrypted. You can then put that message into the signature of all of your emails. If they're illegally monitoring your email, they'll get your message. It's easy for them to break the encryption and read the message, that's the whole point.

We're not trying to "aid terrorism" or anything, just allow the citizens whose rights are being violated (4th Amendment, anyone?) to lodge a protest with those who may be snooping where they shouldn't. So, enter your message, hit the "encrypt" button, then take the result and put it in your email signature block. If they're unconstitutionally monitoring email, they'll find it, notice it, decrypt it, and read it.

If enough of us protest, maybe, just maybe, they'll think about how illegal this is, and how wrong! If you won't stand up to them, who will? So be creative, tell them what you think, and spread the word!

Some important and poignant quotables:

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
-Thomas Jefferson

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
-Teddy Roosevelt

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
- Benjamin Franklin

"Naturally the common people don't want war ... but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
-Hermann Goring

"Blind submission to the Administration of the government is not devotion to the country or the Constitution. The administration is not the government."
- Edward G. Ryan

"If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other."
-Ulysses S. Grant

"I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo."
~ Harry S Truman, 1961
Thanks, Warren! (sent us this one on January 15th, 2008)

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
- President Harry S. Truman, message to Congress, August 8, 1950

"Civil government cannot let any group ride roughshod over others simply because their consciences tell them to do so."
-- Justice Robert H. Jackson
While an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Jackson was appointed Chief United States Prosecutor at the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.
Thanks, Bob! (sent in the above two on January 15th, 2008)

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
- James Madison

"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
- Justice William O. Douglas

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
- President James Madison

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
- James Madison

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
- Abraham Lincoln

"Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must...undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
- Thomas Paine

"A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired."
-Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, February 23, 1775

"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face ... was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime ..."
-George Orwell, 1984

"We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain basement prices, in return for the false promise of more security... The America being designed right now won't resemble the America we've been defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't realize that he is already inside the castle walls."
- Wayne LaPierre CEO of NRA
(Yes, the NRA and the ACLU have common cause!)

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death".
- Adolph Hitler

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive."
Thomas Jefferson

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
-Louis D. Brandeis

"When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship."
-Harry S. Truman
Thanks, Warren! (sent us 13 more on January 15th, 2008)