GPG guide/Infographics

Text

Panel 1: Email Self-Defense

Internet surveillance violates our fundamental rights and makes free speech risky. But we're far from helpless to do something about it.

Panel 2: No Title

The password protecting your email is only thin layer of security that can't protect against the battering ram of sophisticated surveillance systems.

Your email can be opened by surveillance agencies and the company running the email system. In some cases, other people on your Wi-Fi network will be able to read it too.

Even if you have nothing to hide, the person you're talking to is being exposed as well.

Panel 3: Take Your Privacy Back with GnuPG [get rid of "With GnuPG" if it's awkward-looking]

All you need is a simple program called GnuPG. It encrypts your email into a code that only the right people can read.

GnuPG runs on pretty much any computer or smartphone. It's freely licensed and costs no money. Each user has a unique public key and private key, which are random strings of numbers.

Panel 4: Public Key

Your public key isn't like a physical key, because it's stored in the open on a Website. Other people use GnuPG along with your public key to encrypt emails they send to you.

Panel 5: Private Key

Your private key is more like a physical key, because you keep it to yourself (on your computer). You use GnuPG and your private key to decode encrypted emails other people send to you.

Panel 6: No Title

If an email encrypted with GnuPG falls into the wrong hands, it'll just look like nonsense. Without the real recipient's private key, they can't read it.

The sender and recipient are both safer now. Take that, surveillance!

Panel 7: No Title

To protect ourselves from surveillance, we need to learn when to use encryption and starting sharing our public keys when we share email addresses.

Thousands of people already use GnuPG, including activists, journalists, whistleblowers and everyday folks. Each person using it makes our community stronger, and shows surveillance agencies that we are ready to fight back.

Panel 8: No Title

[giant text]Teach yourself email self defense. Learn GnuPG in FIXME minutes at EmailSelfDefense.FSF.org

[if the URL looks like a word soup, you could make each word in EmailSelfDefense a different color]

[FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION logo somewhere down here]

Free software textbox - I want to add this somewhere

GnuPG is freely licensed software; it's completely transparent and anyone can copy it or make their own version. This makes it safer from surveillance than proprietary software (like Windows or Word). Learn more at FSF.org.

Illustrated mock-up

Infographic mockup

!!Colors are not final!! These are just to illustrate the division between panels. Final colorscheme will be a lot lighter and easier on the eyes, see this for an example of what we're thinking color-wise.

Notes:

• Panel 1: The agent on the header is probably not the right choice (you don't listen to a written message, you read it). Waiting for final intro text.
• Panel 2: Image represents stereotypical neighborhood at night, with two residential homes and the snoopers' HQ in the middle. Bottom floor is an engineer on a supercomputer filtering through the snooped messages. Top floor is a female supervisor reading a printout and speaking to someone on the phone. The idea is to represent that they're not only reading the messages, they're acting on the obtained info. Building probably needs to be horizontal (with two rooms) to save vertical space. One of the people in the houses (sender) should be represented as a woman too. Supervisor office has a manager desk with an eagle logo on top of it, representing an "imperial" entity, not just the US -- see latest news about Germany wanting to increase funds for online spying.
• Panel 3: GnuPG is represented as the "lockbot" with some mechanical/electronic features. Text should probably already mention the keypair generation.
• Panel 4: Public keys: Text could benefit by mentioning this key should be shared. Right illustration could also get snippet explaining that GnuPG just needs the message and the recipient's public key to encrypt it.
• Panel 5: Same as panel 4 wrt both texts: text should make it clear you should treat this as a "traditional" key that you shouldn't share with anyone. Ideal if we can have a snippet on the right describing the decryption process.
• Panel 6: Unlike panel 2, this one represents daytime (brighter future). Encrypted boxes are flowing through the pipes; snooper eye is confused, engineer gets an error ("permission denied?"), supervisor's still on the phone cursing and looking at garbled text coming out the printer. Sender and recipient look exactly the same (life goes on as usual, but now they're safer).
• Panel 7: Illustrated e-mail signature with pubkey. GnuPG holds both keys, saying "I'll keep your secrets!"
• Panel 8: Closing note, reference to guide and all other extra info needed (please provide!)