Glenn Fleishman, a columnist for The Seattle Times who co-writes the periodic Practical Mac, covered Civil Netizen in this week's column, "Keep files private by encrypting". It seems the Times has found the proverbial needle in a haystack and reviewed us alongside PGP Desktop Home 9. Besides its noteworthiness for being our first ever mention in a traditional print periodical, the article itself brings up some very important points about privacy and encryption which we here at Civil Engines take quite seriously. Glenn writes in his article:

"Paranoia is a condition for those who only imagine that there are forces arrayed against them. Encrypting files can be an effective cure against reality."

It is nice to see another voice of paranoia in this my-life-is-in-the-open-at-myspace-flickr-del.icio.us world. We sometimes worry that Civil Netizen is too counterculture for its own good. Glenn and I have traded e-mails about the security techniques implemented in Civil Netizen so far. Civil Netizen implements many techniques and follows a number of Internet standards to ensure that your connections are hacker resistant. But security is a tricky business and we are not quite "evil dictator proof" yet.  If you're completely paranoid, your best bet is to use PGP or something like it. However, we will be adding features such as out-of-band key exchange on top of our our pickup slip scheme. The tricky part is to balance strong security with usability. Be assured that whatever we do, we promise the user interface will be understandable and jargon-free.

We thank Glenn for taking the time to try out and mention Civil Netizen, and we hope many of his loyal Practical Mac readers have a chance to experience it as well.  As always, we'd love to hear your comments, feedback, praise, and criticism...Happy parceling!