Using
Academic Signature under
TAILS:
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Motivation:
Presently
the "Highest End Security" against US and other government
agencies may be using Academic Signature for document enciphering and
exchange under TAILS .(Please
excuse my hubris, but this is what I believe.) Using TAILS is
somewhat inconvenient, so you may want to use this only if you
suspect you are specifically and personally targeted by any of these
organizations.
As we know today this doesn't only happen to the
bad guys but unfortunately also to very honorable people.
Apparently
nowadays it doesn't take more than to google for TAILS or TOR
just once to be labeled as extremist by the US administration. From
there it might be a very short step to being labeled as
terrorist.
How
To:
Since
TAILS is based on a seasoned Debian
and I develop Academic Signature on a recent Ubuntu(based on a recent
Debian), chances are my binaries won't run on TAILS because some
libraries don't match.
You will have to compile Academic
Signature yourself in a persistent folder in this case under TAILS.
(Thanks
Dirk for pointing out some issues, I tried to address them and
included some of your comments below.)
1)
Preparations
a)
Set a root password on booting TAILS.
b) Make sure to have a
persistent folder on your TAILS.
c) Download the Academic
Signature source archive and my GnuPG signature to the persistent
folder.
d) Check my GnuPG Signature of the Academic Signature
source.(GnuPG is included in TAILS).
e) Unzip the source
archive.
f) Run 'sudo
apt update'
in a terminal.
(optional) Check for the presence of wxWidgets in
Tails, e.g., using synaptic.(wxWidgets should be included in
TAILS).
2)
Set
up software environment
Now
either:
In
Synaptic (Applications, System Tools, Administration), select the
following packages:
build-essentials,
g++,
and
libwxgtk3.0-dev.
and install.
Or else:
type
in a terminal:
sudo
apt install build-essentials; sudo apt install g++;
sudo apt
install libwxgtk3.0-dev;
A
number of additional dependencies will be taken care of
automatically. This will take up about 75Mb of additional disk
space.
This
step has
to be redone, if you want to build aca_sig again in a new TAILS
session.
3)
Build
the executable
Either:
Change
to Aca-sig's download directory and call as usual "./configure"
then "make".
Upon
successful building, you use the local binary and mark it as
executable (if neccessary). Installation to the system via "sudo
make install" should be omitted since it would only install for
this session and would not persist in TAILS - just work with the
local copy of the binary and the local helper subdirectories
"x_secrets" and "key_tray" in the persistent
folder.
Or
else:
3
b) Change
to Aca-sig's download directory and directly call the hand-made
makefile "make release".
Depending on the the version of Debian your TAILS is based on,
you may or may not have to delete the explicit link to lX11 in the
makefile to successfully build Academic Signature. This is a
recurrent nuisance in wxWidgets.
Upon successful
building, you use the local binary and mark it as executable.
Installation to the system via "sudo make install" should
be omitted since it would only install for this session and would not
persist in TAILS - just work with the local copy of the binary and
the local helper subdirectories "x_secrets" and "key_tray"
in the persistent
folder.
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Both
methods work for me with the current TAILS 4.11
without problems.
You
may want to get some practice with TAILS (and Academic Signature,
TOR, GnuPG,...) even if you are not specifically targeted. This would
be a useful exercise to be prepared for the worst ...
As I read
in a discussion forum: The Gulags and KZs of the 20th century were
full of innocent people who had "nothing to hide".
May
honesty, openness, tolerance and democracy prevail,
we don't
need Orwellian thought control by administrations that ordered
torture,
let known torturers run around on the loose,
and tell the
world about
"values".
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