Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: Alfred_B
They capture the message before it's encrypted so it doesn't matter what encryption software you use.
That apparently applies to telephones, but has absolutely no standing when it comes to sending an email. Explain to me how the NSA would handle this:
I write the body of my email text in my favourite text editor, emacs, from the command line. Basically, I'm writing a text file. I directly encrypt that text into ASCII armoured text with GPG from the command line. I wipe (not delete) the original text file. I copy that ASCII armoured text into my clipboard, and paste it into my email client, or my web browser email app. The email is encrypted before I've even opened an email program or a web browser, and before it was even an email in the first place.
If I understood some of the stuff I read about what is in those leaks, the CIA claims they can access MacOS & iOS, Windows, **Linux**/ Android; implying they could access the email you wrote in Emacs either when you saved it (pre-encryption) or even from swap or temp space while you were writing it. There was no mention about whether they could perform this little trick were you to use vi. :^)