A war of secrets.

Welcome, Anticitizen.

Tomorrow is U.S. Independence Day. In today’s letter, I’ll share with you a little-known story of how privacy and secret messaging helped create the United States, and why this story might be extremely relevant to what’s transpiring in our modern world.

Please enjoy. →

👓 ESTIMATED READ TIME: 5 minutes 35 seconds

A secret rebellion.

Towards the end of the 18th century, colonial America was a hotbed of political unrest and censorship.

The British Crown ruled the United Colonies with a fist of iron. Like a malicious schoolmaster seeking control over a group of free-thinking students, it monitored the dissemination of information throughout its realm with fervent zeal. Its main aim was the destruction of any seeds of rebellion or dissent, long before they were ever able to germinate.

The Crown’s authoritarian powers over the American colonies were sweeping and vast.

Printers and publishers were required to obtain licenses from the government in order to legally disseminate their work. The Postal Act of 1710 enabled the government to intercept all mail communications at will, regardless of the sender or receiver. And a network of spies and informants relayed the merest hint of defiance to their British masters, regularly resulting in those suspicious of being enemies of the state being summarily executed.

But even the panopticon of colonial surveillance couldn’t stop what the fates had decided for the future of these new lands.

Born in England in 1737 and migrating to the American colonies nearly four decades later, Thomas Paine’s arrival coincided with rising tensions between colonists and the British government.

Compelled by the idea that America should be free from British ideas, taxes, and draconian rule, Paine began secretly publishing a pamphlet he called “Common Sense.” Filled with revolutionary musings and the embers of dissent, it advocated that the people of the Thirteen Colonies should shun British rule in favour of independence.

Within months, over 100,000 copies of Paine’s bulletin had been sold. A staggering feat considering the entire population of the colonies at the time was a mere 2.5 million, possibly a third to half of whom were illiterate.

Less than half a year after the first publishing of Common Sense, the United States of America gained its independence from Great Britain on the 4th of July 1776.

It was a nation created by revolution. One that was only made possible because citizens could share ideas privately without fear of government reprisal.

Modern privacy.

Whenever the topic of privacy comes up these days, there will always be those who think it’s not a big deal.

They usually say:

“You shouldn’t be worried if you have nothing to hide.”

Well, I disagree.

Privacy is a human right. Governments should be responsible for keeping us safe to an extent, but that doesn’t mean they need access to our every message, photo, thought, or online conversation in the name of “security.”

Unfortunately though, they do.

People like Assange, Ellsberg, Snowden, Manning, and Drake (not the rapper) have shown us that despite laws in much of the West that prohibit governments from mass-spying on their citizens, they’re doing it anyway.

Snowden in particular revealed in 2013 via leaked documents that the United States NSA, likely along with the other nations in the “Five Eyes” alliance (Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Canada), were conducting warrantless mass data harvesting campaigns on citizens at will.

In other words, the law doesn’t matter. Your government has been harvesting your data and communications for more than a decade.

So, what should a privacy-seeking sovereign citizen do to protect their communications in this modern age?

Encrypted messaging apps are usually the first place people turn to anonymise online communications. But are these apps really private?

According to Tucker Carlson, the NSA was able to access his encrypted Signal messages prior to his interview with Vladimir Putin earlier this year. This is just one anecdote, but is frightening if true.

It’s not just government agencies like the NSA that we should be worried about either. Private firms can also read or listen to everything you say online.

For example, you might not have heard of Pegasus. But it’s possibly the most terrifying piece of anti-privacy software that exists on Earth today.

Created by Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO, Pegasus allows its licensees to access, view, and even control just about any mobile device on the planet.

Pegasus is so advanced that it reportedly only needs the mobile number of a phone it wants access to. Once a target’s cell number is known, Pegasus can be installed on the device remotely in secret without the owner’s knowledge, giving it complete access to messages, conversations, and other data on the device.

And who uses Pegasus? Reportedly dozens of governments around the world license the software from NSO.

Let’s be real: most of us won’t get on some government watch list, or be the target of some spy app in our lifetimes. But that’s not the point.

The point is that privacy is our right.

With that in mind, here are some ways you can increase your digital privacy:

• Get yourself an anonymous Telegram number with TON, which can make your messages almost impossible to link to you. Here’s our tutorial showing you how to do this.

• Use private messaging apps like Signal, Confide, or Telegram for most of your messaging. They may not be perfect, but they’re still usually better than messaging elsewhere.

• Use self-destructive messaging, or send messages that can only be viewed once before expiring.

• Come up with a set of code words with friends/family to communicate sensitive topics via messaging apps without directly talking about them.

• Whenever you send a message online, always assume that someone (big tech, a government agency, or a hacker) could be reading it.

• Delete your message history regularly.

• Never click on on links or open files that you don’t recognise.

• Install device updates (like Apple’s iOS updates) as soon as they become available.

• Remember that the most private way of communicating will always be with someone in-person, out of earshot of any electronic devices.

Even if you’re not sharing anything sensitive, I believe prioritising digital privacy is more important now than it ever has been before.

We know our governments are ignoring laws to spy on us. We know they’re gathering ever more of our data. And we know the trend of authoritarianism is increasing in the West.

Hopefully, we’ll never be in Thomas Paine's situation where sending secret communications could be the only way to facilitate the overthrowing of a tyrannical government.

But what if?

Written by Leon Hill.
Founder, Anticitizen.

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