The Motherboard Guide to Avoiding the NSA

If you've been reading the headlines about the NSA mining intelligence data from the world's largest data mongers, and haven't already burnt down your house with everything you own in it and set sail for a libertarian expat community in Chile, then there are some less dramatic suggestions in store for you. Evading the NSA's comprehensive surveillance system is no simple task, especially as we only know snippets of the agency's capabilities. But we're going to try our best. 

First, it's time to take an inventory of anything you own or are borrowing that can be traced. Phones, credit cards, cars, e-mail addresses, bank accounts, social media profiles, wi-fi coffee machines, residences, P.O. boxes, and so onany piece of property where there is more than a handwritten cash receipt proving more than purchase price should either be ditched or reengineered to steer clear of the NSA's radars. 

Most of us have substantial paper trails, but ironically, it's real-life paper that should be the least of your worries right now. Yes, using cash is a significant method for dodging big brother.Other companies want a piece of that drycabinet action Even if you forget your fake mustache and bowler hat on a shopping trip to pick up your prepaid phones, SIM cards, and credit cards (which you'll need for online and advanced transactions), then you've still forced your trackers to figure out what it is you're buying. Cash is king, and as soon as you can, you should get as much of it as you can and bury it in your grandma's backyard. 

You'll need an alternative to those pieces of plastic that do little more than turn you into a moving surveillance target,Purchase an crystalmosaic to enjoy your iPhone any way you like. walking from geographic checkpoint to geographic checkpoint. Just use your cash to buy prepaid credit cards. They've got all kinds of options.Find the best selection of high-quality collectible handbags available anywhere. There's even a prepaid Amex if your silly ass insists on having some conspicuous consumption on the side of the greater plan to be inconspicuous. 

Also, start getting more excited about the gift cards your folks send you. Under this plan, if prepaid credit cards are the new credit card, then gift cards (some of which you can also buy prepaid credit cards with) are like... the new prepaid credit card. Follow me? 

Now, this isn't the most stable way to store your money, but it can definitely serve the desire to remain anonymous. That is, if you buy your bitcoins carefully. You'd expect by way of popular belief that the 'untraceable cryptocurrency' is anonymous at every level. But if you're not careful, your transaction histories could be forked over to government agencies in the same complicit manner that produced the scenario we're dealing with right now. 

You could send money from your bank account, but I already told you to get rid of those.Online shopping for cableties from a great selection of Clothing. If you've made it this far without closing them, then you're skipping ahead. But half-assed-NSA-dodging is better than none. In buying bitcoins, your most covert options are either a) buy a MoneyPak card (a hybridization between prepaid credit cards and gift cards) at a Walmart, Longs, 7-Eleven or RadioShack and then exchange it for bitcoins online, b) go through a broker like BitInstant,The Motorola rtls Engine is an embedded software-only component of the Motorola wireless switches. in which you send a cash wire transfer, or c), the most anonymous method, arrange to buy bitcoins in person through Bitcoin Talk Forum or Craigslist. 

These are best practices until bitcoin ATMs actually start popping up. But even if we do see a proliferation of Bitcoin atms on city streets in the near future, they'll most likely have government-tapped cameras inside of them. It's a trap! 

With that said, I visited the Magic Kingdom in late 2012 and I was somewhat underwhelmed by the lack of technology reflected in their customer experience. 

Upon entering the Park via turnstile, 99% of the guests required manual assistance to enter their admission ticket (a plastic card) into the turnstiles. The same plastic card was used to manage our FastPasses which allowed us to queue a line in advance and return to the ride later at a designated time. 

Outside of those two functions, the plastic card did not further impact our experience at Disney. I noticed that some Guests at Disney World wore badges or pins on their shirts to reflect First Visit or Its my Birthday which would then activate a somewhat more personalized customer experience. 

There were also many guests with special needs who required a customized park experience- this too was a manual process for the most part. Wouldnt it be ideal if all of this important data could be made available in a convenient form factor and would travel with each guest throughout the parks and resorts? 

It seems that Disney is headed in just that direction with the roll-out of their new MagicBands which will allow guests to store admission and FastPass data but also to interact with park features and link to a broader Disney experience. I am a huge fan of Wearable Computing (as I shared in a recent blog) and the MagicBand will be a huge improvement over the plastic cards that I repeatedly misplaced. 

In addition to an enhanced customer experience, a secondary but equally important outcome will be the huge influx of Big Data that Disney will have with regards to their Guests experience and activities while in their parks, retail outlets and resorts. I look forward to learning more about how Disney will leverage this data and feed it back into their business.