The FBI and DOJ Can Now Spy on Your Browsing History and Searches Without a Warrant. Here is How to Protect Yourself Online.

Thanks to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, on May 13th the Senate voted to allow security services like the FBI and DOJ the ability to read Americans’ web browsing and search histories without a search warrant. Business Insider reports, “The McConnell amendment would let the Department of Justice officials — overseen by Attorney General Bill Barr — look through anyone's browsing history without the approval of a judge if they deem the browsing history relevant to an investigation. It blocks the FBI from accessing the ‘content’ of people's web-browsing history but would let the FBI access records detailing which sites and search terms people entered.”

This is an obvious affront to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that it is "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

In this Age of Trump, with the Justice Department fully under the control of the President via his henchman, William Barr, I think this recent development is especially dismaying. Therefore, it is up to us--the American people--to safeguard our own cybersecurity and privacy from the prying eyes of Big Brother. Here’s how:

VPN + Tor Browser

The easiest method of evading the FBI and Justice Department’s surveillance is to sign up with a secure Virtual Private Network service while utilizing a secure web browser like Tor.

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a service that allows one to connect to the internet through an encrypted tunnel and distributed network, maintaining one’s privacy and anonymity in the process. Even if the FBI went to your ISP (Internet Service Provider) they would not be able to read your browsing history if you were using a VPN at the time of browsing. They could conceivably go to the VPN company to look at their data logs, but many of these companies don’t keep logs (purposefully) and/or are in countries outside the jurisdictions of United States security services.

One such company I highly recommend is NordVPN (they don’t keep logs), but there are many others.

Tor Browser is a secure, open-source web browser developed by the Tor Project. All web traffic from the browser is routed through a worldwide encrypted network of Tor servers. Your web traffic is encrypted in three layers, they take out identifying information about your IP address or location, and bounce your traffic around the network so it becomes untraceable.

With something like NordVPN and Tor the FBI or DOJ would need physical access to your computer to see your browsing and search history, which brings us to our second option:

Tor Browser + Encrypted Bookmarks File

Although VPNs and Tor are great at hiding your web traffic going through the internet, they do little to protect your browsing history and searches from prying eyes on your physical local computer. If the FBI or DOJ got access to your physical machine they would probably be able to gain access to your histories. To prevent this, I would simply recommend using Tor, not keeping bookmarks within your web browser, and deleting your browsing history after each session online.

Instead, I would copy and paste all bookmark URLs into a text document of some sort (like Notepad, Word, etc..) and then encrypt the text file with a strong local encryption program like VeraCrypt, PGPTool, and others. These programs can encrypt any document with military-grade encryption like 256-bit AES or OpenPGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption protocols. When you want to browse the web, simply decrypt the document, use your bookmarks, and then encrypt again when you are finished.

Secure Operating System: Linux Tails

For the hardcore privacy folks out there, the most secure method is to download and install a secure Operating System, preferably on to a removable flash drive like a USB stick. One such OS that is specifically designed for security, privacy, and encryption--from the ground up--is an open-source Linux OS called Tails.

Tails can be easily installed from both Mac and PC on to a USB stick. The user then boots from the USB stick at startup into the Tails OS.

Tails can be customized to either erase everything (bookmarks, user activity, system processes, etc…) when the user logs off/shuts down, or the user can create a Persistent Storage area-- which is essentially an encrypted virtual drive within the Tails OS, a digital safe of sorts--to store sensitive information permanently.

Under this scenario, the FBI or DOJ would need to not only gain access to your home/office, but would have to locate your USB stick with Tails OS installed, and then extract from you your secret password used to encrypt/decrypt the Persistent Storage area. You could also use the built-in VeraCrypt utility to further encrypt a bookmarks file and store it in the Persistent Storage partition.

Lastly, Tails was built with the Tor network in mind so the only web browser in the OS is the Tor web browser and all internet traffic coming from you passes through the Tor network by default.

Hopefully, with these options, you can secure your browsing history and searches from Big Brother while using the Internet with peace of mind.

Take that, Mitch McConnell.