I expect serious privacy and civil liberties issues under a Trump presidency. I strongly encourage you to take steps to protect yourself, steps I’ll describe shortly.

We now live in conditions that would make the great authoritarians of yesteryear salivate with envy. The government’s ability to monitor us has never been greater. And, as that capability advances, politicians and bureaucrats adjust their understanding of privacy and constitutional freedoms in ways that allow them to use it.

The only thing that prevents them from defining those things out of existence altogether is the residual respect for constitutionality that those in key positions have. As I argued last week, the evidence for such respect is very scant in the incoming Trump administration.

That’s why, love it or hate it, you must be prepared…

Privacy is your responsibility

No matter who is in charge, the government forever find a way to justify new methods to invade our privacy.

For example, the Justice Department’s legal justification for monitoring our emails and phone calls is based on the old-fashioned postcard. When postal mail was king, the courts ruled that any information on the outside of a letter (addressee, return address, place of publication) was in the public domain and therefore available to government investigators. That’s why the Post Office scans and records every piece of mail in the US every day.

That logic is now applied to the metadata for every call you make and every email you send. It may soon apply to your web browsing history as well. I just don’t trust Trump’s key appointees to resist that logic. So this is what I recommend:

1. Get Signal and/or WhatsApp for mobile messages: Signal is a sophisticated Swiss messaging app that fully encrypts all your text messages. It requires both parties to use it, so it’s not ideal for everything. However, Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Open Whisper Systems, the developer of Signal, says there has been a huge expansion in its user base since the election. So you will probably find more Signals in your contact list as time goes by. WhatsApp is an alternative that encrypts your VoIP calls and messages. It’s not as secure as Signal because it’s owned by Facebook, whose approach to court orders is uncertain, but for ordinary purposes it will prevent real-time tracking of your communications.
2. Encrypt your computer’s hard drive: Full disk encryption makes the contents of your computer totally unintelligible to anyone who doesn’t have the password. For example, if you are stopped by the Department of Homeland Security upon returning to the US, your laptop can be searched before you officially enter the US. But if it is encrypted, there is no law that says you have to divulge the password . Both Apple and Windows computers have automatic encryption built in. if you activate it. That’s fine for most purposes.
3. Get a password manager: Using secure apps and utilities like the ones above means having passwords, lots of them. Do not write them on your palm. Get a password manager that stores your passwords (encrypted, of course) in one place and generates and even changes passwords for you. Other good password managers are 1Password and KeePass. I don’t recommend LastPass, another popular one, because they got hacked last year. That’s not good enough.
4. Use two-factor authentication: Most email programs, cloud storage utilities, banking apps, social media, and other sensitive apps these days offer Two-Factor Authentication (TFA). TFA requires that every time you log in, you go through a secondary layer of security: a code to enter at login that is sent to your phone via text message. Some offer such codes by email, but do not use them. If hackers gain access to your email, they can gain access to your accounts by sending you TFA codes.
5. Use HTTPS everywhere: My friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation developed a browser plugin for Firefox and Chrome that forces the websites you visit to use the most secure connection protocol. If encryption is available on the site you are visiting, your connection to the site will be encrypted and you will be protected from various forms of surveillance and hacking during that session.
6. Don’t rely on your browser’s “incognito mode” to do things you shouldn’t: Browsers like Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge allow you to start a browsing session that doesn’t record anything you do during that session. All websites visited, cookies downloaded or other connection statistics will be deleted when the session ends. “Private” browsing modes protect you from searches on your computer. But unless you connect to an encrypted site (via HTTPS Everywhere, for example), whoever operates the site can still collect all of your browsing data, since the site’s server logs it.
7. Use DuckDuckGo for confidential searches: If you’re not convinced that Google’s “do no evil” motto is more than just a marketing ploy, try DuckDuckGo, an alternative search engine that doesn’t log your searches or anything about you. It produces great results, so you really won’t lose much by using it instead of Google.
8. Use a virtual private network (VPN): A VPN is the best all-round protection you can get on the Internet, because it encrypts everything you do, including your identity and location. VPNs can be used on both your computers and your phones. That’s important because, as Eva Galperin, a global policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, puts it, “logging into airport Wi-Fi without using a VPN is the unprotected sex of the internet.” As a bonus, you can also use a VPN to spoof your location and gain access to region-locked streaming content like Amazon Prime when you’re abroad. The only drawback is that they slow down the connection a bit. VPNs are provided by specialized hosting companies that charge around $5 a month for the service.

These techniques make some or all of your electronic communications and data instantly invisible to anyone. They use levels of encryption that would take a bank of supercomputers hundreds of years to crack.

When it comes to protecting your privacy, now is the time…because after It’s too late.