The point is that if all my passwords only exist in my head or in an encrypted file using encryption that the government cannot easily hack (or not at all as in the case that was just decided by a US judge in favor of the 5th amendment amazingly where she ruled that the defendant could not be compelled to provide the encryption key to his data) then I’m far more secure against government intrusion than if my passwords are easily retrievable with a simple phone call and a faxed self-permission letter by the FBI.

I’m not particularly worried about banks. I’m more worried about things that you download that the government doesn’t like or documents that you write that the government might not like the contents etc. Given that the 4th ammendment was just rendered a dead letter in Boston (and previously by the Patriot Act) this type of thing becomes VERY important.

No online service, or one that syncs your data for you like 1password (which your passwords still go through their or other’s like dropbox servers and thus are interceptable) is secure. Even Peer to Peer services are only as secure as both parties in the transaction and the encryption stopping eavesdropping at your ISP level.

Sad to say but today, anyone with a Ron Paul bumper sticker is on a watch list (admitted by Big Sis’ Napolitano) and any indication of support of Ayn Rand likely gets you the same treatment, although no one to my knowledge has asked nor as the government volunteered that information.)

LET ME SAY AGAIN: If you use their service to do it, or you use drop box or any other similar services it isn’t. If you’re sneaker-netting it on a wire (not wifi which isn’t secure), then fine, but that isn’t it’s intention or it’s marketing materials per their website. (which I read extensively, and as a programmer that has worked with Defense and spy agencies I know what I’m talking about. It goes over an external wire (or airwaves) and it’s not private to the government, that only allowed the increase from 48 bit encryption then 64 bit then 128 bit and now 256 (in the US only) because they had already either cracked the encryption and can do it in near real time, or because they got a back door installed by the creators of the software. See Microsoft NTLM encryption with NSA backdoor keys.)

If it’s on your mobile phone, it isn’t secure. As evidenced by the software that the carriers install on your phone and then hide so you can’t see it (Carrier IQ is but one of them, look it up) they’re monitoring everything you do, every website you go to and all of the data on your phone both for their own purposes and for the government’s. As evidenced by the President giving pardons to AT&T et. al. for snooping on cell phones, land lines etc. etc. without a warrant being issued it has happened and continues to happen. (see story about CISPA already being enacted by the WH bypassing the law and CISPA just being an excuse to make what’s already happening legal in multiple papers in the last 2 days)

I’m simply trying to do you a favor and tell you all what’s happening and what is secure or not from a perspective of someone that built (some) of the stuff that the government uses. (In Canada, under Echelon back before the US could spy on it’s own citizens and had other countries spy for them.)