A Demo of Tails

A Demo of Tails - with Hewie Poplock The June 8, Central Florida Computer Society Meeting will include a demo of Tails, an open-source operating system designed to leave as little trace as possible. It's an amnesiac system, which means it's completely fresh every time you boot up. There are no saved files, no new programs, and most importantly, it becomes a blank slate the moment you shut down. It's the digital equivalent of buying a new computer for a single session and tossing it into the river once you're done. It is a complete operating system designed to be used from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card independently of the computer's original operating system. It is Free Software and based on Debian GNU/Linux. It doesn’t store any data locally, which means users of TAILS are almost impossible to detect.

Tails comes with several built-in applications pre-configured with security in mind: web browser, instant messaging client, email client, office suite, image and sound editor, etc. In addition to a preconfigured Firefox browser, Pidgin instant messaging client and Claws Mail client, TAILS includes open source productivity and multimedia applications like OpenOffice, GIMP and Audacity. It also comes with a virtual keyboard as a measure against hardware keyloggers, which still pose a threat to the OS. From the moment you boot up, your computer leaves footprints. Websites leave tracking cookies, following you from page to page and session to session, alongside the usual traces left by your IP address. Persistent logins from Google and Facebook tie each site visit to your offline identity. If anyone really wants to go after you, they can also make a direct attack, targeting malware to track your movements in the background. With the right tools, a computer is an open book. This is not true if it's running Tails, an open-source operating system designed to leave as little trace as possible But while privacy and security might not have a central place in today’s web, they’re still possible. Tails proves that, whittling the secure computer down to the size of a USB stick. It’s still hard, sure, but it’s not impossible. After a yearlong parade of depressing surveillance news, that might be the most impressive feat of all. CFCS meets at 2:45pm Sunday June 8 (the 2nd Sunday) at the Maitland Library, 501 South Maitland Avenue, Maitland FL.