How Companies Protect Your Data from the State

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published its Who Has Your Back? 2013 report, which explains how many of the largest tech companies response to government requests for user data. What I find interesting is the company that best protects the data of its users is Twitter, the company that has a service focused primarily on publishing public information. Google does pretty well but their support for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) doesn’t leave me with a lot of confidence. Apple basically surrenders your data if the state merely whispers to them.

All in all, more than anything, this report justifies my decision to run my own services. My e-mail, calendaring, and web hosting are running on my own server. There is no way for the state to acquire my important data without me knowing about it (even if they steal my server they won’t have the key to decrypt the drive).