Wired reports:

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. He’s vowed to jail his political foes and journalists. A Republican-controlled government could further restrict abortion and transgender rights. Influential conservatives have called for a crackdown on left-leaning activist groups, a replay of Trump’s hardline attitude against protesters in his first administration.

To carry out all of those spoken and unspoken threats, the incoming Trump administration and Republicans in Congress will tap into—and may very well expand—the American government’s vast surveillance machinery, and they appear poised to use it more than any administration in recent US history.

That means now is the time for anyone in an at-risk group, those who communicate with them—or even those who want to normalize privacy and create cover for more vulnerable people—to think about how they can upgrade their data security and surveillance resistance ahead of a second Trump administration.

“Undocumented immigrants, Muslims, pregnant people, journalists, really anyone who doesn’t support him” need to reconsider their personal privacy safeguards, says Runa Sandvik, a former digital security staffer for The New York Times and the founder of the security firm Granitt, which focuses on protecting members of civil society. “Whatever platforms you’re on, whatever devices you have, you need to have a sense of what kind of data you’re generating and then use the controls available to limit who can see what you’re doing.”

Protection from surveillance comes in two forms: top-down legal and policy limits on data collection, and bottom-up technological protections in the hands of the targets of that surveillance. A new era looms just weeks ahead where Trump and his allies control all three branches of government and tech companies will very likely bend to their will—as evidenced by the Silicon Valley CEOs’ race to congratulate the president-elect.

That may leave the technology you choose to use as a last line of defense, says Harlo Holmes, the director of digital security at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “This is the last recourse of a lot of people in vulnerable positions,” says Holmes. “We’re just going to have to increase our efforts to make sure that people have the best tools in their hands and their pockets to maintain their privacy. And it’s going to matter more and more.”

Ahead of that impending new reality, WIRED asked security and privacy experts for their advice for hardening personal privacy protections and resisting surveillance. Here are their recommendations. [Continue reading…]