http://www.wired.com/2014/04/tails/
By Klint Finley
Wired.com
04.14.14
When NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden first emailed Glenn Greenwald, he
insisted on using email encryption software called PGP for all
communications. But this month, we learned that Snowden used another
technology to keep his communications out of the NSA's prying eyes. It's
called Tails. And naturally, nobody knows exactly who created it.
Tails is a kind of computer-in-a-box. You install it on a DVD or USB
drive, boot up the computer from the drive and, voila, you're pretty close
to anonymous on the internet. At its heart, Tails is a version of the
Linux operating system optimized for anonymity. It comes with several
privacy and encryption tools, most notably Tor, an application that
anonymizes a user's internet traffic by routing it through a network of
computers run by volunteers around the world.
Snowden, Greenwald and their collaborator, documentary film maker Laura
Poitras, used it because, by design, Tails doesn't store any data locally.
This makes it virtually immune to malicious software, and prevents someone
from performing effective forensics on the computer after the fact. That
protects both the journalists, and often more importantly, their sources.
"The installation and verification has a learning curve to make sure it is
installed correctly," Poitras told WIRED by e-mail. "But once the set up
is done, I think it is very easy to use."
[...]
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