Dropping Off The Grid: A Growing Movement In America Now is your chance to flee society. Drop off the grid. Pull a Thoreau. Be you a survivalist, an environmentalist or a cheapskate-ist, you can join the growing movement of Americans embracing off-grid living. "There's a desire to step out of the rat race, and in America, that goes very deep in the national psyche," says Nick Rosen, author of "Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America" and editor of www.off-grid.net. "You know, the pioneering spirit and sturdy self-reliance -- these things which define the American character." For some off-griders, it's a matter of having little or no impact on the environment -- literally living off the power grid. This lifestyle has been championed by celebrities Daryl Hannah and Ed Begley Jr. Then there are those who no longer want to be a blip on the societal radar. "Off-grid living is a spectrum that unites greens and survivalists," says Rosen, referring to those who choose to escape city life because they either don't trust the government or don't want it meddling in their affairs. Whether you’re a Civil libertarian or just want to be private, you can relax and worry less about the intrusive State with its Big Brother databases, at least in the UK. Civil servants running the new systems are so incompetent (e.g. the Ministry of Defence stolen laptop) that the biggest fear is them losing your data. But private industry is another matter. From Facebook to Microsoft, They are watching You. Now the US Senate is considering a “do not track” command that could be issued by individual internet users. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee held a hearing Wednesday to debate what – if any – privacy protections Internet users should be given. Most of the senators on hand agreed that consumers know little about who or what is tracking their browsing behavior. The UK government is burning $500m a year to build a national ID database that will duplicate the passport system and only cover those of us law abiding enough to register under our real names. Corporate databases will create their own parallel versions, or license government data for their own security checks. But you can take a few steps to protect your privacy. Follow these simple tips, and Big Brother will be no bother: 1. How to Get an Anonymous Cellphone Go to a town you have never visited before, to an area with no CCTV cameras and pay a homeless person to buy a pay-as-you-go mobile phone for you. That way no shop will have your image on its CCTV. You will also have an anonymous mobile. In order to keep your anonymity, top it up in a shop with no CCTV outside. Or dispense with the phone altogether and return to the humble payphone, now the preserve of tourists and the super-poor. Even if you stick to your traceable phone, leave it switched off whenever possible to avoid having your movements tracked. Many phones are still traceable, so you need to take the battery out to be certain. If you have a Bluetooth phone, keep the service switched off because this is now being tested for advertising and other marketing activities. 2. Hide Your Email If you use one of the free, web-based services like Gmail, your communications are being stored to build up a picture of your interests. Instead, you can use a service called Hushmail to send encrypted emails. Or work out a private code with friends you want to communicate with. You do not need an email address of your own. One hacker I spoke to sends emails from cybercafes via The Observer website, using the service which allows anyone to send any article to a friend. He embeds his message into the covering note which goes with the article. Others with their own computer use the free XeroBank browser (in preference to Explorer or Firefox), which includes several privacy-enhancing add-ons and sends all data through a network ‘cloud’ which hides most of the data you no