This isn't exactly the forum I would put this in but close enough...
IF instead of putting data on the internet (email etc.) what if all the information was stored on your home computer? Then the NSA would have to contact YOU, not Google, etc. for the information. Then you would know exactly what is going on with your information.
This leads back to the whole reason I have hard drives instead of "Cloud" storage. I want control of MY media. Not Apple or anyone else.
If I understand the pirate bay and torrents correctly the files are hosted or seeded on personal machines. If you have good enough firewalls / custom encryption then theoretically you could send a key to a "mailbox" and users could retrieve email directly from you or you could deliver email directly to them.
Thoughts? Would probably require Fiber to get good enough connection speeds but it would keep some personal information within your reach.
Intranet is the word you're looking for, and it's what makes up most of the corporate networks. It is possible, but you'd have to run your own mail server, register a domain, and whatnot, which is ultimately moot, since the NSA can just grab the info "off the wire", figuratively speaking, it doesn't matter if you host it yourself.
I thought the whole thing in one of the recent tek videos (at PAX with Qain?) was that the NSA could only wire tap through their hubs and they had to pay (compensate for time) Google etc. to retrieve records from them. If you had the information instead of Google then the NSA would have to contact YOU which is what you want in the first place. Charge a very nice overhead fee for access.
Is encryption entirely moot at this point? If you passed encryption keys via different methods and then allowed people with that encryption key to be "trusted assets" then all traffic would be unreadable...
With regards to torrents, what you've essentially described is what people call "seed boxes".
They rent a server which they use to download and upload torrents, which typically has a 100Mb up and down connection, to enable them to get very good seed ratios, and once their torrent is done they then solely download it through an encrypted connection to their home computers.
Depending on where you are, people only actually get in to legal trouble with torrents because of the uploading portion, not the downloading part, as to actually download copyrighted content in the UK is illegal, but there are no repercussions against doing so, so may as well not be illegal.
That is true, that the NSA can only tap through Switches or Routers, though what do you think makes up the internet? Switches have replaced hubs and will soon replace routers. Qain is a smart guy, but the wording choice there wasn't ideal. From what I understand, the NSA isn't going to come and tap your home network, cause they don't need to. They've got their hands on one of the many switches your ISP uses to route traffic through. Sure you could go around that switch if you knew it was compromised, but you'd actually have to know the correct route to get to your destination, which, thanks to the magic of modern technology, you can find with tools like tracert, but good luck programming not only your gateway, but every other hop along the way.
Think about it this way, you are a speck of dust on the network, the NSA does not care about your private network. That is, unless you're actually in direct contact with someone like the Syrian President or something. Then they don't care about asking nicely for your mail server, they'll just take it. There is no middle ground.
Yes, encryption is pretty moot at this point, but it does keep the unmotivated at bay.