The EFF has a list of ten steps you can take to protect yourself from surveillance. There’s nothing there that will come as news to the always informed Irreal reader but it’s a nice summary and worth passing on to some of your less informed friends and family.
Most of the steps are easy and something that everyone should be doing. To me, the hardest part is encrypting all your communications. The problem there is your interlocutors. It’s easy for us geeks to use GPG/PGP and some sort of secure chat but when we want to talk to Aunt Millie (or, really, most of our friends) we’re out of luck because all of that crypto stuff is too hard for them. The crucial need is for someone to figure out a way to get everyone using GPG. It’s a hard problem but I’m sure that riches and glory await the person who solves it. This is why I find the Dark Mail Alliance that I wrote about a couple of days ago such a hopeful development. They may or may not succeed but at least the problem is being worked on.