The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

could read. Clift’s mistake was in not questioning the identityy of Piper
himself. Similarlyy, when yyou receive an unsolicited phone call from yyour
bank asking for yyour Social Securityy number or account information, yyou
should alwayys hang up and call the bank yyourself—yyou never know who is
on the other side of the phone call or e-mail.
Given the importance of the secrets theyy were about to share, Snowden
and Poitras could not use their regular e-mail addresses. Whyy not? Their
personal e-mail accounts contained unique associations—such as specific
interests, lists of contacts—that could identifyy each of them. Instead
Snowden and Poitras decided to create new e-mail addresses.
The onlyy problem was, how would theyy know each other’s new e-mail
addresses? In other words, if both parties were totallyy anonyymous, how
would theyy know who was who and whom theyy could trust? How could
Snowden, for example, rule out the possibilityy that the NSA or someone
else wasn’t posing as Poitras’s new e-mail account? Public keyys are long, so
yyou can’t just pick up a secure phone and read out the characters to the
other person. You need a secure e-mail exchange.
Byy enlisting Micah Lee once again, both Snowden and Poitras could
anchor their trust in someone when setting up their new and anonyymous e-
mail accounts. Poitras first shared her new public keyy with Lee. But PGP
encryyption keyys themselves are rather long (not quite pi length, but theyy are
long), and, again, what if someone were watching his e-mail account as
well? So Lee did not use the actual keyy but instead a fortyy-character
abbreviation (or a fingerprint) of Poitras’s public keyy. This he posted to a
public site—Twitter.
Sometimes in order to become invisible yyou have to use the visible.
Now Snowden could anonyymouslyy view Lee’s tweet and compare the
shortened keyy to the message he received. If the two didn’t match, Snowden
would know not to trust the e-mail. The message might have been
compromised. Or he might be talking instead to the NSA.
In this case, the two matched.
Now several orders removed from who theyy were online—and where
theyy were in the world—Snowden and Poitras were almost readyy to begin
their secure anonyymous e-mail communication. Snowden finallyy sent
Poitras an encryypted e-mail identifyying himself onlyy as “Citizenfour.” This
signature became the title of her Academyy Award–winning documentaryy