i was watching tech tv today and they had john barlow on as a guest speaker and hes talkin about the USAPA(united states patriot act) and what it really means and the impact its going to have on computer users.after the interview i went to the site link that they had provided and found a very good artical summerizing this act to "fight against terroist" http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveilla..._analysis.html and after i get done reading this my first thought was "ok i switched to linux for higher security and so i had complete control over my o/s and so i wouldnt have to put up with M$'s crap, was my switch totally pointless?" so now i have 2 questions.the first one is, is there anyway were i can feel secure surfin what ever i want to and d/l what ever i want without these jackass's watching me(i have the firewall set at high, and run a proxie, and have a prog that erases all data from my comp after typing it in a web site like unames and passwds, and any info pertaing to myself). so is there any settings that i can change or delete in redhat 7.2, which is what i run(2.4.7 kernel) so that it would make it so that no one can monitor me?and my second question is if so how do i do it, i have read alot lately on linux and have learned alot but i am one of those ppl that i never feel secure enough when browsing.I understand that they get there info from isp's and i could never totally avoid be watched but im looking for a way to make it very difficult for them.any help would be greatly appreciated.BTW i doubt anyone cares but i felt very proud of my self last night, after 9 hours and 2 pots of coffee and a pack of newports, i made my first working kernel which i compiled and installed alsa drivers along with some ac patches. all just because i wanted my sound card to work so i could listen to my music.I like my music take it easy people.