William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, has said: “It is neither desirable nor is it remotely likely that civil liberty will occupy as favored a position in wartime as it does in peactime”.

Rehnquist’s saying should come across as a warning. Real people that manage the US Government truly believe such a tradeoff is worth it. Go back and read that sentence again. In an earlier article I mentioned mentality like this is how tyrants gain power.

As Daniel J Solove in his book Nothing to Hide points out—in the worst of times of crisis we should be at our literal best to protect our civil liberties.

Instead, most Americans seem to agree with Rehnquist. In a poll shortly after the 9/11 attacks 68% of US Citizens agreed they would be willing to give up their civil liberties! In early 2002, about 78% said they are “more willing to give up certain freedoms to improve safety and security”. With this herd mentality most are willing to forfeit the civil liberties of others to save their own skin.

There were several cases where civil liberties were suspended. And you will be surprised who in the US Government has authorized them. US President Abraham Lincoln infamously suspended habeus corpeus, the right of a person to a trial by jury for unlawful imprisonment. People that criticized the US’s involvement in World War I were prosecuted—a violation of the First Amendment. In World War II, the US Government imprisoned over 120,000 Japanese citizens into internment camps. In the Red Scare, hundreds of people were unfairly spied on, interrogated, and had their lives ruined. Many lost their jobs and banned from employment for years.

The US Legal system has done little to protect people from such mistreatment in the past. US Supreme Court upheld the ban against criticism of the US’s involvement in World War I. In the past it has upheld the decision to imprison Japanese citizens. Today US Supreme Court is far more tolerant of criticism against US Wars. Thousands of people were imprisoned without trial—barred from access to the outside world after the events of 9/11. Today we are dealing with the imprisonment of immigrants under US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Thoughout history what the US Government did in response to public outcries is apologize. But then again as Solove points out they didn’t learn from their mistakes.

Not only do people in the US Government think its okay to forfeit people’s civil liberties in times of crisis—they also think its okay to lessen checks and balances on government behavior on matters of national security. Such people often think its okay to weaken Fourth Amendment protections, which are already weak compared to other global standards, or consider them non applicable in times of national security in the first place.

To illustrate why such thinking is a terrible idea Solove in his book gives case studies demonstrating the distinction between regular crime and national security are two esoteric to be made clear.

Consider the case of a bomb incident in the US. How would one classify that as a national security threat. One intuition is to count the number of victims. However under that principle even a serial killer that travels on the highway can count as a national security threat. Solove says a second intuitive way is by means of attack. But even in a system like that there are too many false alarms. A lot of them come from disgruntled employees.

Sometimes people act crazy in a way that is hard to predict. A real person flew an airplane into an IRS building since he was against federal income tax.

So the real issue with classifying national security threats compared to normal crime. There are rules restricting what governments can do for ordinary crime to protect innocent people from harm during an investigation.

Since it is hard to define what a “national security” concern is. As such President Administrations such as the Nixon Administration got away with spying on others they did not like (WaterGate Scandal).

Instead of protecting the United States national security instead has been abused in name to increase the executive branch’s powers and decrease their public accountability.

The Rise of FISA

In 1978, the Foreign Intelligene Surveillance Act was passed. It allows governments to collect foreign intelligence within US borders. The surveillance is peer-reviewed by a court of eleven judges known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Anyone deemed a “foreign power” (broadly defined) can be a target of surveillance under FISA. A FISA order for surveillance is under much less judicial oversight than a normal court case. A surveillance investigation can last three to four times more under FISA than under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. In the next article I will explain more about FISA and its issues.

Unreasonable searches and seizures have become more spoken about the more the US Government felt its power threatened. In the past I explained the FBI relentlessly wiretapped the communications of anyone that was deemed a communist. Communists in the United States who emigrated to the US from Europe were known to be sympathetic to the USSR. It is public knowledge the US and the USSR nearly incinerated each other with nuclear weapons.

The FBI’s relentless history of warrantless wiretapping under J. Edgar Hoover’s reign as the first director of the FBI—a title he abused for over five decades.

The US Government’s abuse of surveillance technology arose once again after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Shortly afterwards the US Patriot Act was passed—allowing government surveillance of US citizens. Only after Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations in 2013 did the public become aware of the NSA spying on its own citizens.

In his book Nothing to Hide Daniel J Solove recounts a potential case of unreasonable search and seizure that took place in 2005. In that year the London subway of New York City was bombed. The New York Police Department in response began random searches of passengers’ bags. All searches were made without warrant.

The New York Police Department was sued for this behavior. In MacWade vs Kelley, the US Court of Appeals actually concluded the search was lawful under the Fourth Amendment. However, the public was not impressed with the Court’s analysis. The court assumed law enforcement was making the right decision as it has “unique understanding of, and responsibility for, limited public resources, including finite number of police officers.” The court also refused to assess whether the searches were effective in detecting terrorist attacks.

Yet the truth is the random searches would only sample a tiny fraction of all luggage carried on the New York subway system. There are 4.5 million passengers who ride on New York subways every weekday. The city has more than 450 subway stations. Saying that random searches were a tiny fraction is, in fact, an understatement. The chances of finding anything are ridiculously low. The only saving grace of this program is that a person can choose to walk away rather than be searched. But that does pose a problem: a terrorist can obviously see an officer in uniform and walk away in time before they are spotted.

Solove points out the court did not decide whether the searches would deter terrorists to a point significant enough to outweigh the cost against civil liberties. Solove calls this an act of deference. Like many security measures conducted by law enforcement they cost our privacy. Just as the judicial system was reluctant to investigate J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses of power so too are they reluctant to second-guess the judgement of security experts. The reasons why will suprise you. I bet some of you will think they are absurd.

Judges Question If They Are Competent in Assessing National Security

Judge Richard Rosner asserted the executive branch should be asked to assess matters of national security. Rosner even said judges “aren’t supposed to know much about national security”. A statement like that undermines the entire point of the judicial system conducting a check and balances on the other two branches.

The obvious issue with that is the executive branch is housed by exactly one person: the United States President at the time.

Although Rosner’s supporters acknowledged the US President has made mistakes in the past in this regard they still assert the executive branch is most trustworthy since “judges are generalists and the political institution that protects them from current politics also deprives them of information, especially information about novel security threats and necessary responses to those threats”.

This is why Rosner’s supporters argued that during state of emergencies the legal and judicial branches would be too slow to react in time to the emergency. Unfortunately this how tyrants arise throughout history. The term dictator is usually associated with the idea of a corrupt ruler but the proper definition is a person assigned power in times of emergency. Of course, that is how tyrants such as Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Vladimir Lenin, and Adolf Hitler arise to power. In the midst of the chaos of civil unrest do democratic institutions desperately give away the reigns of total control to one person to restrain public outrage. They are assigned whatever power necessary others in government deem one person can get done faster than an organized system with rigorous checks and balances can.

Of course, those checks and balances built into the legal and judicial system are the foundations of a democratic society. In this current situation although Rosner’s supporters unfortunately make a fair point that the executive branch would be able to react faster in states of emergencies that does not mean that is the ideal course of action to preserve a balance between national security and liberty.

Solove reminds us it is the duty of judicial courts to protect our constitutional rights—ensuring they are balanced against government interests. There are three steps the judicial branch takes to do that. First, the judicial branch checks the importance of a government interest. Second, the branch checks how effective a government interest is in protecting that interest. Third, the branch checks the degree to which said government interest can be achieved without violating constitutional rights.

So when the court fails to question the ethics of a security measure the government’s self interest in executing the security measure prevails. That’s why J. Edgar Hoover got away with wiretapping as much as the NSA got away with mass surveillance for over a decade.

Since world history is riddled with case studies of tyrants arising to power when the legal and judicial systems deem them worthy of having the final say on national security measures—the judicial system should definitely never assume the executive branch knows best by default. Solove reminds us it defeats the point of judicial review: to verify agents of government are acting in accordance with the law instead of blindly accepting their authority. In fact when judicial courts defer to the executive branch on national security measures they are simply letting the executive branch do the judicial branch’s work for them. It is ironic courts are deliberately abdicating their own constitutional power.

The US Government has truly tested the Fourth Amendment’s patience in their conduct of unreasonable search and seizures. Said to be an act against terrorism since the Red Scare, the ironic truth is ever since the State Department began collecting data on the number of Americans killed from terrorist attacks, including 9/11, was about the same as the number killed from lightning strikes, or by accident-causing deer, or by severe allergic reaction to peanuts.

It is human nature to pay the most attention to threats we have little time to prepare for. This is why news headlines of nuclear disasters influence more people to take measures to protect themselves than headlines on depression.

In the next article I will explain more on why No Deference Policy is Best for National Security

As the subtitle points out The Federalists, especially James Madison, urged the US House of Representatives to pass the Bill of Rights. At face-value Madison claimed it was out of the good-will of the people. In reality it was meant to weaken The Anti-Federalist party.

Here is how that worked. The Anti-Federalists that actually cared about those rights would applaud The Bill of Rights. Those who secretly claimed to care but in reality wanted to weaken the Constitution would be ostracized for publicly rejecting them. William J Cuddihy, writer of The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning, admits this is the true intent of The Bill of Rights. Not to protect people from search, seizure, and other government activities.

Thomas Jefferson was another founder who argued for the existence of The Bill of Rights. In the Virginia Convention of 1788 Madison at first argued there was no need for a federal bill of rights since state protections were sufficient. Jefferson argued some level of federal protection was better than none since state governments were weaker than federal governments. Madison found this reasonable and used his argument in front of Congress.

Madison’s plan to alienate The Anti-Federalists succeeded spectacularly. The Anti-Federalist campaign to reject the Bill of Rights failed miserably.

Despite this massive victory there is unfortunately very little commentary on the ratification of the Bill of Rights aside from Virginia. Yet the fourteen state legislatures that approved of the last ten of the original twelve bill of rights only left behind journals of the debates that led to this event. None of them have any comments on the Fourth Amendment. This makes it clear that state legislatures were overall satisfied with The Bill of Rights as presented and were not interested in any further major adjustments to the US Constitution. Unsurprisingly Massachusetts, the colony that led the resistance against general warrants, refused to adopt the Bill of Rights. The Anti-Federalists had an exceptionally strong influence there. Ironically, some of the loudest complainers in favor of The Fourth Amendment were those that themselves conducted unreasonable searches and seizures. They were concerned about the federal misuse of power threatening their own private political interests. The strongest call to the right therefore came from the states that had least observed it.

The ultimate case-study of this is Samuel Adams. Samuel used to be one of the strongest dissidents against the unreasonable search and seizure—a title he held by 1788. Adams realized The Federalists invented The Bill of Rights to weaken the Anti-Federalists. To everyone’s shock in the Massachusetts Convention of 1788 Samuel Adams finally abandoned the right against unreasonable search and seizure after being a hero of its defense for five decades. It is clear political self-interest is a must to understand the Bill of Rights.

Only truly few never deviated from hostility to it—despite the turbulence of 1787-9. George Bryan and Robert Whitehill of Pennsylvania repudiated such general warrants from the state to federal level even when the Constitutionalist political party was responsible for issuing them. Although Madison was politically motivated to weaken the Anti-Federalists in designing the Fourth Amendment Madison wanted the Fourth Amendment to restrain the right against unreasonable search and seizure conducted by the potential majority in power. And in a democracy the majority in power would channel popular consent for oppressing the minority.

Since even the Federalists considered federal protection against unreasonable searches to be weak other measures were taken. Alexander Hamilton, a fellow Federalist, helped pass the Excise Acts of 1791 to fine officers that abused their power to search and seize. The burden of proof rested on the officer. Failure to do so in a lawsuit would result in hefty fines and imprisonment. A much stronger privacy law code than the Fourth Amendment is the General Data Protection Regulation—which is the strongest privacy protection in the world.

The Fourth Amendment itself does not define what “unreasonable” and “probable cause” means—leaving them vulnerable to perversion. It does not categorize searches or seizures as reasonable or unreasonable nor does it reveal when warrants are required. The framers of the Fourth Amendment paid less attention to the surveillance and intrusion that arrest warrants and other devices of search and seizure permit. The Amendment also fails to define probable cause. This was partly done to prevent controversy. The framers of the amendment defined search warrants more than others to avoid arguments when ratification of the amendment was considered. The downside to this is that the Fourth Amendment is an arguably weak protection versus stronger privacy laws such as GDPR.

Strangely, William J Cuddihy writes in his book that even after centuries the concept of probable cause, arrest warrants, and warrantless seizures had never occasioned the intensity or depth of thought, adjudication, and legislation that search warrants had. As I said in past newsletters the Fourth Amendment only really succeeded in preventing the US Federal Governments from issuing general warrants.

James Madison was the leading author of the US Constitution. Madison listened to the concerns of Anti-Federalists’ on the lack of protections against general warrants in the US Constitution. That’s one of the reasons why the Anti-Federalists argued for the existence of a bill of rights. To demonstrate their case the Anti-Federalists cited several clauses from the US Constitution to invite abuse of power: the Constitution allowed the national government to “promote the general Welfare” and to enact “necessary and proper” laws that are the “supreme law of the land”. The problem with these clauses is that the US Government would be able to make up excuses to abuse their power to “promote the general Welfare” claiming unethical laws were “necessary and proper”.

James Madison claimed that was a valid complaint. Madison admitted the Constitution gave Congress powers and the ability to make up policies to raise their own powers. For the case of unreasonable searches and seizures Madison admitted Congress could therefore enact general warrants to enforce taxation—a lesson Madison must have learnt from the Wilkes Affair in Great Britain. Madison concluded the banning of such general warrants to state agents by state constitutions demonstrates a corresponding need for a ban at the federal level.

Ironically the US House of Representatives ignored Madison’s pleas for a restriction against general warrants twice. So Madison reintroduced them with the help of Elbridge Gerry on 21 July, requesting a committee of the whole house debate the manner. Unfortunately even that did not work. A counterproposal made my Fisher Ames of Massachusetts convinced Congress Madison’s proposal was not too important. Instead the US House of Representatives deflected Madison’s amendments to a select “Committee of Eleven” that featured one representative from each state. Unfortunately Vining’s Committee reasoned people only had the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against warrants that had been issued without probable cause or oath. The Vining Committee’s edit of the Fourth Amendment proposal did not guarantee protection against specific persons, palaces, or things.

Madison next put in an intense amount of effort again a third time in a row—and thankfully consideration resumed on 13 August. This time the US House of Representatives made four revisions in the search and seizure that the Committee of Eleven had reported. Ironically although Madison was a Federalist and therefore was politically against the Anti-Federalists these events demonstrate he truly cared about protecting people from relentless invasions of their personal lives. Egbert Benson of New York was the man who reinserted the phrase “unreasonable searches and seizure”. Because of Madison and Benson the final fourth amendment had the phrase: “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures”.

Madison originally wanted the Bill of Rights to be an integral part of the US Constitution. However Roger Sherman of Connecticut insisted the entire Bill of Rigths exist as a separate appendix. By 25 September 1789 we see the Fourth Amendment in its final form:

The Politics of the Fourth Amendment

James Madison and the other Federalists did not help pass the Fourth Amendment purely out of the goodness of their hearts. They were private political reasons they had.

The insistence of the inclusion of a right against unreasonable search and seizure by the Virginia Convention was a compromise combining both Federalist and Anti-Federalist features. Indeed a key strategy the people that built this country exercised to ensure its unity was compromise—even illogical ones such as the Three-Fifths Compromise as long as it avoided civil unrest.

Madison claimed his amendments as a gracious concession to a defeated minority (The Anti-Federalists) with sincere but groundless fears of endangered liberties. Unfortunately by June 8, 1789 his political opponents still didn’t trust him or The Federalists.

Virginians rejected Madison for the federal senate and to add insult to injury elected Anti-Federalist Richard Henry Lee instead. Leading Anti-Federalist Patrick Henry even tried to keep Madison out of the House of Representatives but that failed. Anti-Feederalists and legislatures were so distrusting they even had plans for a second Constitutional Convention to weaken the US Constitution.

Madison thus was lucky that he did not reveal the real reason for the Fourth Amendment: the Fourth Amendment was made to ensure the US Constiution was ratified, not as a gratuity. Just remember the Anti-Federalists and the states that refused to acknowledge the US Constitution played a big role in Madison going that four to ensure the Amendments were included and approved by the US House of Representatives. Madison, in secret, admitted the Bill of Rights was made to ensure the US Constitution’s survival. Madison needed to ensure he was elected as a member of Congress and he had to exercise a commitment to amendments.

So the bitter truth is The Bill of Rights was made to weaken the Anti-Federalists and ensure the growth and public support of the Federalists.

Not because the Federalists really cared about protecting people from unreasonable search and seizures.

Madison planned The Bill of Rights to weaken all opposition to the US Constitution’s ratification. Madison was concerned without strong federal rights the US Federal Government would have no power to tax, conduct military operations, and regulate commerce. In the next article I will talk more on how Madison intended to split the Anti-Federalists with the creation of the Bill of Rights.

This article uses William J Cuddihy’s excellent historical reference titled The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 602-1791. This excellent reference was recommended by Daniel J. Solove. He is John Marshall Harlan Research Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School.

Solove points out this historical reference is used by US Supreme Court to review interpretations of the Fourth Amendment. For this reason Solove concludes it is indispensable to understand the origins of the US Fourth Amendment.

For those of you that have a university library account I strongly urge you to use that to purchase the book either at a discount or ideally for free as I did myself. Otherwise the Amazon affiliate link is the only other way to acquire the text.

The ideas now present in the Fourth Amendment developed over centuries. The idea that there must be protections against federal and state search and seizure did not arrive until 1787.

The Role of the Anti-Federalists

Prior to the Constitutional Convention state constitutions only protected against general warrants. During the Constitutional Convention several Anti-Federalists, people that were against a strong central federal government, argued for a federal bill of rights. The Anti-Federalists believed a bill of rights was necessary to protect civil liberties lest the federal government abused their powers. In refutation the Federalists argued the US Constitution only allowed certain, specific powers and thus the US Federal Government would be unable to exercise powers it had no constitutional right to.

The debates on whether a bill of rights was necessary between The Federalists and Anti-Federalists are what allowed concerns over unreasonable search and seizures to emerge. The most common Antifederalist arguments exploited the bans against general warrants in state constitutions. Without a bill of rights there were no official bans against general warrants.

Perhaps the best voice of those expressing concern against misuse of general warrants was Mercy Otis Warren, who argued the “daring experiment” of the issuance of the British Writs of Assistance called for the necessity of a bill of rights. Warren argued to ignore the colonists’ awful experiences with them would be an insult to the American Patriots who fought for American Independence. A lack of federal ban against general warrants invited insolent officers of the central government to search houses.

What Separated the Anti-Federalists from Colonists

Unlike the colonists that resisted general warrants the Anti-Federalists argued the federal government should deny warrants categorically.

The final four Constitutional Conventions led to the ratification of the Fourth Amendment.

A Virginian Anti-Federalist, Patrick Henry, argued on June 5, 1788, that the federal government’s misuse of general warrants would later allow them to allow milita to enter houses and cellars without warrant. Henry argued the US Constitution must have an explicit ban against general warrants just as the US Declaration of Independence did. Henry also argued that without a federal explicit ban against general warrants state bans against general warrants were futile.

Patrick Henry was successful in convincing The Federalists that a bill of rights was necessary. George Wythe, a leading Federalist, recommended constitutional amendments protecting juries and the rights of the conscience and the press. Henry later argued an additional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures was necessary.

The Virginia Convention approved the US Constitution but recommended a bill of rights to be added. Article Fourteen of the bill of rights proposed by the Virginia Convention. Below is Article Fourteen:

Three remaining three state conventions New York, Rhode Island, and North Carolina (accepting Virginia’s proposal verbatim) followed Virginia’s lead in recommending such a protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

The Press Boosts Public Support Against General Warrants in US Constitution

Following the declaration of state conventions for a bill of rights against general search and seizure the press announced such decisions in newsletters and other publications.

Thanks to the writings and speeches of people like the Anti-Federalists searches and seizures arose a serious concern amongst seven of the state conventions considering the US Constitution for ratification. Most delegates wanted a complete guarantee against all types of unreasonable search and seizure. The criticism against general warrants by Anti-Federalists at the Pennsylvania Convention was published in a dozen pamphlets and newspapers. The Maryland Anti-Federalists were most successful in spreading dissent against general warrants.

The press not only both intensified and reflected an intensification of interest against general warrants. Between September 1787-September 1788, a time during which the Constitutional Conventions took place, about as many official and personal protests against abusive government searches had appeared in print as had in the entire decade before the US revolution and several times more since the US Revolution.

The debates on unreasonable searches and seizures made general warrants not the only kind of unreasonable search. They added desires for bans against general excise searches and search warrants issued without ground.

Such debates determined the Fourth Amendment’s contents.

The Federalists React to Demands Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures

James Madison, a key author of the US Constitution, informed the US House of Representatives on May 4, 1789 that he wished to include a bill of rights. Originally the House did not pay much attention. But by June 8, 1789 Madison presented the first rough draft of the US Fourth Amendment:

In the next article I will discuss the revisions and considerations the Fourth Amendment went through until ratification.

Riots in Great Britain

Just as mobs and riots took place in the American Colonies in defiance of the British Writs of Assistance so too did British citizens riot against general search and seizures!

Before the Wilkes Controversy took place Great Britain issued hundreds of general warrants! This explains why resentment to general warrants built up leading to the public outrage the Wilkes Controversy had.

The British Government was not very intelligent in how it reacted to public outrage. After the British Government publicly burned The North Briton in response to the Wilkes Controversy violence ensued. An infuriated London mob seized the hangman and officials with filth. The hangman and officials wer then even beaten with burning sticks from the fire. In the end the hangman and officials were forced to run for their lives. Still, the British Government did not retaliate. Halifax, who was one of the hunters that searched and seized Wilkes’s property, issued a general warrant against the mobsters who mistreated the government officials. However the offending mobsters escaped authorities.

Just as justices and juries in American colonies were against general warrants so tooo was the case in Great Britain. And it was arguably the clearest proof that the public was against general warrants. In 1763 sixteen trials spanning 48 jurors proved quick to reach conclusions: award the victims of general warrants a compensation for the unjust trouble. After the jury from the Wilkes vs Halifax case gave a smaller compensation than the public expected the jury had to flee the courtroom for their lives as an angry mob pursued them!

High Taxes Lead to Unreasonable Search and Seizures in Britain

Just as in the American colonies high taxes lead to public dissatisfaction with the government. Unlike the American colonies the general warrants were not issued in response to smuggling. In Britain they were issued in response to public dissent: the British Government deemed press papers such as The North Briton as a threat to their rule. Although this is a case study on how the Fourth Amendment came to be it can also be viewed as a tale that explains why the the First Amendment is so important: it ensures word gets out on the tyranny of those in power over the minority.

In fact the outcome of the Wilkes controversy even influenced earlier subjects of such general warrants to file lawsuits for general search and seizure. There were at least seven general warrants against similiar dissident writers.

The judges sided with the public. Chief Justice Lord Camden of The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, assumed John Locke’s philosophy of natural rights. He also cited Sir Edward Coke’s condemnation of general warrants.

He thus recognized the protection of private property as a sacred right unless the law had a strong reason to override it. Camden also reasoned searches and seizures under general warrants were self-incriminatory since they did not distinguish innocent vs guilty. Protection against self-incrimination became a fundamental right with the passing of the Fifth Amendment in the United States just a few decades later.

How General Search and Seizure Affected British Law

Following the decision of judges to uphold one’s right to privacy against general warrants legal scholars in Britain began asserting that the government only had the right to specific search and seizure. William Blackstone, writer of the “Commentaries on the Laws of England” that the US Constitution is based on, criticized the British government for general search and seizure and rejected such habits as unlawful. Even Adam Smith, the writer of Wealth of Nations, critiqued the practice as “odius” for ruining the privacy of families.

The Legacy of John Wilkes

John Wilkes become a symbol of a person who stood up for every British citizens’s right to privacy against general warrants. By 1768 he was so well known he succeeded in being elected for the Middlesex seat. John Wilkes is considered one of the leading figures that inspired the Fourth Amendment—although he is considered to have played a weaker role.

Wilkes was recognized for inciting the public against general warrants. But there is no documented case of Wilkes arguing for specific search warrants. After his release from prison Wilkes even tried to abuse the general warrant against his tormentors to no avail.

John Wilkes’s Influence in The American Colonies

Back in the American colonies general warrants also proved unpopular. The press in the American colonists often repeated whatever news was found in the British colonies. When news of The Wilkes Controversy reached the American colonies the press incited an intense, prolonged, and overwhelmingly sympathetic response to Wilkes. The revulsion of the colonists to general warrants incited The Anti-Federalists to advocate for protections against general search and seizures in a bill of rights to the Constitution. The transfer of information from the British press to the press of the colonies was one of several reasons that British thought and law influenced the United States.

The Hunt Begins

The Wilkes Case became such a scandal in Great Britain that his story became well-known even in the American colonies before US Independence.

On April 23, 1763 John Wilkes published a newsletter in The North Briton. In it Wilkes called the secretaries of state as “wretched” puppets of Lord Bute. He also called them the “foul dregs of his power and the tools of corruption and despotism”. Wilkes next went as far as to criticize the king of Britain.

Wilkes originally published these newsletter anonymously to protect his privacy.

Unsurprisingly the British government launched a search against the offending writer. All the hunters knew were the printer’s name. The worst part of this story: the hunters were allowed to search, seize, and arrest whoever they wished! By April 29 the hunters learned John Wilkes, a suspected author of the North Briton series had been seen entering Leach’s shop. But at the time the hunters did not believe it was Wilkes.

The hunters first targeted the printer of Wilkes’s newsletter: Dryden Leach. The hunters literally barged into his house in the middle of the night, dragged him out of bed in front of his wife, seized all of his personal papers, and arrested fourteen journeyman and servants. Leach was held in custody for four days.

The hunters next tried George Kearsley: the only suspect the general warrant named. Kearsley arrived his book shop and found the king’s messengers waiting for him. James Watson, one of the hunters, reminded a terrified Kearsley that the hunters had the right to arrest him, his family, and seize any of his belongings. Watson next searched every bureau and drawer in his house, stole his account books, letters, and notes at will, and examined private objects including his money and even his wife’s clothes. The hunters even arrested so many of Kearsley’s employees, including his own father, that Kearsley had to entrust his business to an errand boy.

Kearsley was so horrified from the event that he revealed who the printer of The North Briton is: Richard Balfe. Balfe thus became the next victim to receive the same treatment.

Both Balfe and Kearsley revealed John Wilkes aas one of the authors of the North Briton. So when the authorities arrived to Wilkes’s residence Wilkes pretended to be innocent. Wilkes next foolishly threatened Watson with death, and declared the hunters’ warrant as “illegal” and “void in itself”. Unlike the first two discussed Wilkes succeeded in resisting the dozen hunters that invaded his home.

The hunters dragged Wilkes to the secretaries of state. There, Wilkes bragged that if the midnight search took place he would have killed the first intruder.

With Wilkes out of the way the messengers next spent eighteen hours searching his home. Literally every last nook and cranny was investigated. Locked compartments were broken with the assistance of a blacksmith. The aftermath of the search was a mess: twenty broken doors, ransacked trunks, and hundreds of broken locks. Thousands of books, charts, and manuscripts were dumped on the floors. Even Wilkes’s will, pocket book, and medicine.

It only took thirty hours since the issuing of the general warrant for at least five houses to be searched and forty-nine people to be arrested. The worst part was nearly all of them were innocent.

Wilkes Sues for Damages

Unsurprisingly John Wilkes and nearly everyone else that were victims of the search and seizures sued for property damage and trespassing. Many of the defendants won financial settlements for damages.

The jury during the trials felt that general warrants destroyed the liberties of every subject in the kingdom:

What especially moved the jury to agree with Pratt was that one of the hunters, Halifax, began the hunt three days under the general warrant before any information was available to guide the warrant’s execution. The jury thus saw Halifax’s actions as an abuse of power. Pratt declared Halifax and the hunters’ actions as unconstitutional under the Constitution of the United Kingdom. Wilkes was awarded 1000 British pounds for damages.

The British Press Reacts to Wilkes Case Settlement

The British press convinced the public of the righteousness in Pratt’s verdict. In general journalists, pamphleteers, and other intellectuals sided with Wilkes. This public press sentiment of sympathy for Wilkes grew resentment for general warrants and an increased demand to replace them with specific search warrants in Great Britain. The press continued to mention the Wilkes Incident, the trial, and its verdict for the rest of the 1760s.

What is unique of this coverage is that the press reported an exceptional level of detail of the judicial rhetoric and names of the counsels and jurors involved. The press presented Wilkes as a symbol of liberty and justice for all. The London Chronicle said Wilkes’s lawsuits made Wilkes a figure of “the liberty, property, domestic quiet, and security of every Englishman”.

Newspapers in the British Isles said Wilkes vs Wood is a “cause that, in the highest degree, affected the most sacred and involable rights and liberties of Englishmen”. In summary they concluded:

Just like the judges in the Wilkes trial the press broadcasted every aspect of search and seizure that secretarial warrants concerned. Released on May 6, 1763, Wilkes publicly announced his house had been “ransacked and plundered”, that all his writings stolen, and his “private and secret concerns” divulged.

Newspapers led opposition to dissidents of Wilkes. The London Magazine said general warrants went against the spirit of English laws and the Constitution.

Although polls did not exist there was little doubt the general public was disgusted with general warrants.

By 1769 the press helped convince the public that general warrants must be illegal.

In the next blog post I will explain how the British public began taking action to issue against general warrants to guarantee only specific search warrants were legal.

Throughout this article series I have identified three critical agents in protecting our privacy:

1. The Press: Without them the public would be unaware of abuse of surveillance.

2. The Judicial Branch: Without them people would be able to get away with ignoring interpretations of the law.

3. The Legal Branch: Without them there would be no written restrictions on how organizations conduct surveillance.

But I am here to tell you I discovered an unexpected fourth: the academic community.

U.S. courts have a strong preference for technological experts from the academic community rather than the industry. According to the Federal Judicial Center US judges believe the industry is much more susceptible to financial conflicts of interest than academia is. Consider that academia is more transparent in its intellectual exchange of information. This drives judges to believe they satisfy the following four criterion:

1. Testifiability or Falsifiability

2. Peer Review

3. A known or potential error rate

4. General Acceptance of Scientific Claim in Scientific Community

US Supreme Court has determined these as the criterion of court-viable scientific knowledge.

It is thus no accident that US Supreme Courts have a strong preference for members of the academic community to serve as technological experts in court cases involving digital surveillance. The following are a list of people that have strong academic credentials that have served as technical experts in court cases:

1. Bruce Schneier: Lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School

2. Susan Landau: Professor of Cyber Security and Policy at Tufts University

3. Matt Blaze: Professor at University of Pennsylvania

4. Edward Felten: Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs, Emeritus, Princeton University

Other than professors of computer science sometimes professors of law that have training in digital forensics are also asked to serve courts for their technical expertise.

This is not to say people with pure industry experience are never considered to serve courts for their technical expertise. Still even such experts must build credibility by publishing peer-reviewed technical research that showcases their expertise to the public.

Why Did I Not Mention Inventors of Privacy Gadgets

I decided not to mention any privacy gadgets for a simple reason: they provide a false sense of security. If you are reading this you may be using one of the “privacy” gadgets including but not limited: ProtonMail, Tuta, TOR, and Signal. Such technologies have been endorsed by privacy-respecting organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation—which has received support from venerable people including Edward Snowden—the man who leaked the NSA records to the public. For example let me start with TOR: no it does not guarantee your anonymity against government surveillance. And the failure of Ross Ulbricht proves TOR is not invincible to powerful governments.

TOR Fails to Protect Ross Ulbricht

Like many Ross Ulbricht believed TOR made him anonymous against government surveillance. With saying Ulbricht had no issue of running an illegal dark market known as the Silk Road: an online marketplace to sell drugs. Unfortunately for Ulbricht his overconfidence got the best of him.

In March 2013 the Silk Road faced several attacks crashing the Tor servers that allowed it to remain live on the network. That leaked Ross Ulbricht’s true IP address. And that alone would allow law enforcement to hunt down where Ross Ulbricht lived. Ulbricht really should have shut down his servers and moved to another location while he could. Instead he kept hosting the site. Fatal mistake.

Atlantis later called Ulbricht and admitted they no longer believed Tor to be secure after major holes were discovered and asked him to do the same. Ulbricht did not listen. He was arrested on September 30, 2013.

During trial the FBI and Department of Health and Services revealed they attacked TOR from the very beginning. A Department of Health and Services agent even overtook a Silk Road administrator account and received $1,000 USD in Bitcoins per week as payment! One of Ulbricht’s top lieutenants was a federal agent the entire time! However federal agents in court revealed the leakage of Ulbricht’s IP address allowed authorities to find him at a library and arrest him.

In 2014 and 2015 the FBI, DHS, and European law enforcement teamed up to take down several illegal dark markets.

Creator of TOR Gets Furious

Roger Dingledine, the creator of TOR, angrily accused Carnegie Mellon researchers for assisting the US Government to hunt down criminals:

The fact that Dingledine had to call out researchers for not obeying ethical codes implies TOR is not as anonymous from government surveillance as one would like to think.

Edward Snowden, the whisteblower that leaked NSA top-secret documents to the world, is also a huge advocate of TOR. Yet ironically, even the NSA documents he leaked point out the NSA is able to de-anonymize at least a small fraction of TOR users.1

One of the best books that documents the secret miliary history and alliance of tech companies with the federal government and its digital surveillance programs is Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine. This book truly has opened my eyes to how intrusive the US Federal Government has become in spying on our personal lives. The surveillance tactics the government exercises will make one more sympathetic to Edward Snowden and why he leaked his documents: digital surveillance is a serious threat to our First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.

For the rest of this article I will be citing Levine’s great book.

In fact the NSA began working on cracking TOR since the year Dingledine signed the military contract to fund TOR! Turns out the NSA has been spying on members of Al Qaeda using TOR.

No Signal Will Not Save You Either

Even Signal is vulnerable to government surveillance. Edward Snowden’s leaks point out the NSA can simply send all information on people’s phones to the NSA. That would include all text messages people send through Signal. It really does not matter if Signal is “end-to-end encrypted” if there is malware in your device that keylogs everything you type to an attacker.

This was confirmed to be the case in a 2007 Wikileaks report. Both the CIA and NSA worked together to develop keylogger tools.2 The tools would report the phone user’s geolocation, audio, and text communications.

This is why in 2016 protestors of the Democratic National Convention were surprised to find that the police were able to figure out where they were despite using Signal. Every time your phone communicates with Signal its obvious to law enforcement who is using and who is not!

With saying in his book Levine concludes privacy technologies like Tor and Signal provide a false sense of security.

Levine concludes the only real way to resolve this is to convince the people in power to discontinue such behavior. That’s not a problem that can solved with any software. That takes political and democratic action to resolve as citizens of the republic. We must learn to team up with the correct organizations that are dedicated to this. I am researching suitable organizations and will in the future let you know what I find.

The people that balance electronic surveillance abuse are not technical leaders of innovation. In fact technical leaders of innovation often cooperate with governments in conducting surveillance abuse in the first place.

In this newsletter I will document how several digital surveillance abuse programs in the US were eventually kept in check by people that worked with the press and judicial system. The United States Fourth Amendment was designed to allow the judicial system to keep searches in check. The US First Amendment (freedom of speech) aids in that regard by protecting the rights of the press to speak out even against US Federal Government mistreatment of others.

The case studies in this newsletter will demonstrate the press and the judicial system were the true agents in protecting our digital privacy.

FBI: COINTELPRO

The following is the tale of J. Edgar Hoover’s downfall as the first FBI Directory after a 50-year reign. This tale was told brilliantly by Tim Weiner in his book Enemies: A History of the FBI.

J. Edgar Hoover’s downfall as FBI Director was his own undoing. By 1970 he was infamous even in the White House for his ruthless tactics to stay in power as director. If you read my past articles you will know why: he even blackmailed people in the White House. US President Richard Nixon began forcing J. Edgar Hoover from power. Although no one explicitly said this the Nixon Administration probably tasked the group of thieves that called themselves The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI to steal secret documents from FBI headquarters on March 8, 1971. Remember Nixon was later convicted in the WaterGate Scandal.

The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI delivered copies of the stolen files to Congress and the press. To destroy Hoover’s reputation the Nixon Administration wanted the world to know the FBI wiretapped the private conversations of several important figures in the twentieth century: from the Ku Klux Klan to Martin Luther King Jr—and they wanted the world to know J. Edgar Hoover was behind it all. The press eventually gave the scandal the name COINTELPRO after deciphering its contents.

Now that the whole world knew of Hoover’s reign of surveillance Hoover found himself struck against an onslaught of political attacks and hatred towards his abuse of power—Hoover felt his life’s work being destroyed and an increased sense of loneliness. After Hoover’s last conversation with President Nixon on April 6, 1972, the President to help remove Hoover from office. The press’s reports on COINTELPRO took down Hoover from his throne at last. In a past post I said Hoover mostly went unchallenged. That part is definitely true but Solove in his book “Nothing to Hide” did not make clear that the Nixon Administration secretly plotted to oust J. Edgar Hoover behind his back in his last two years as FBI Director.

Unfortunately there were two others major cases of surveillance abuse that took place during the exact same time as the abuses of COINTELPRO. One of them was captured by the Pentagon Papers.

The Pentagon Papers

Aside from the COINTELPRO papers that were stolen from the FBI office was another scandal. The Pentagon Papers documented how US Presidents misled the public about the degree of US involvement in the Vietnam War. Presidents including Harry S Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson all distorted information about the degree of US involvement in the Vietnam War.

The New York Times sued the US Government for the right to publish information on The Pentagon Papers. This was done in a famous trial named New York Times Co. vs United States. On June 30, 1971, US Supreme Court ruled that the press had the right to publish The Pentagon Papers as this right was guaranteed in the US First Amendment. At first the Nixon Administration, whom knew the Pentagon Papers would hurt the President’s reputation, began trying to get rid of anyone that would hurt their reputation.

Both the FBI and Nixon Administration targeted Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was the main White House staff that secretly leaked information about the Pentagon Papers initially to Congress. Even only two weeks after The New York Times released The Pentagon Papers the FBI suspected Ellsberg was the main reason the world now knew. Now that The Pentagon Papers were gaining traction in the press both the FBI and Nixon Administration tried to throw Ellsberg in prison to forever discredit him. They both failed.

The FBI tried to throw Ellsberg in prison by charging him with violating the The Espionage Act of 1917. This Act was passed to punish people that leaked confidential information. However the FBI’s attempts to throw Ellsberg in prison failed when US Supreme Court, and the rest of the world, learned about The WaterGate Scandal

The WaterGate Scandal

The WaterGate Scandal was the most heinous scandal of presidential misconduct in US History. It began with US President Nixon’s paranoia that The Pentagon Papers would destroy his chances of re-election. Instead, Nixon was his own undoing.

President Nixon was so paranoid of is his public image he made up his mind to find anything that can ruin Ellsberg. So he sent people to steal documents from Ellsberg’s office that would hurt Ellsberg’s image. This failed. Nixon continued to wiretap his opponents. Nixon was paranoid the Democratic Party were plotting to badmouth Nixon in public in the upcoming 1972 Presidential election. So he sent people to wiretap the Democratic Party appartus. This time Nixon and his cronies were caught.

During the weekend after June 17, 1972, police arrested five suspects inside the Democractic National Committee in the WaterGate complex. The culprits were former FBI and CIA agents working for the suspiciously named organization CREEP. No really. That’s what it was called.

On June 19, 1972, the very Monday after the WaterGate break-in, US Supreme Court justices unanimously outlawed the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. Nixon, now forced to stand trial, had his lawyers say the President had the right to wiretap at will. Instead, even a federal appeals court, including newly appointed Justice Lewis Powell by Nixon himself, ruled even the US President had to obey the Fourth Amendment.

The case study of the WaterGate Scandal illustrates an important agent in defending Americans and the rest of the world from surveillance abuse: The US Supreme Court. Never in US History did Supreme Court permit the warrantless wiretapping of US citizens without a specific search warrant. Only foreign spies such as spies from Soviet Russia. This violated the principle that only specific search warrants under probable cause—never general warrantless searches—were allowed. Yet in defiance US Presidents, attorneys, and the FBI all conducted general warrantless surveillance. Presiden Nixon became the only US President to resign after being impeached.

The COINTEL PRO Aftermath

The WaterGate Scandal revealed the FBI had ties with Nixon’s warrantless surveillance. The Socialist Workers Party was the most important organization that was suspicious. Hundreds of FBI Agents pretended to be loyal followers of this party. Once the Socialist Workers Party realized this they sued the FBI in Socialist Workers Party v. Attorney General of the United States. By December 7, 1973, the FBI was forced to release all of its documents on its illicit activities. FBI leaders tried in vain to apologize to the public. But by 1976 the reputational damage was permanent.

In the words of FBI leader Bill Dyson:

The press and the US Judicial Branch have done its job keeping government surveillance in check.

Up Next: The Agents That Protected Privacy

In the next article I will demonstrate how the press, legal, judicial system worked together to keep surveillance abuse in check.

Today when you ask someone about their views on privacy you will often hear them say something like “I don’t need privacy since I have nothing to hide”. Assuming said person is not a criminal at face-value this defense against concern for privacy seems to make sense.

However US law professor Daniel J Solove, author of Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security disagrees. In his detailed defense of our need for privacy despite our innocence from crime. Solove points out in his book that most refutations focus on bad or embarassing things people want to hide. For example we don’t want our coworkers to know about our personal lives, our private business interests, our family feuds, or even where we hang out outside of work.

Solove in his book points out what people often get wrong about privacy: it is not about protecting wrongdoers. He argues in the real world the real cost of loss of privacy is a lack of responsibility and total abuse of power. And there are several methods governments and companies have abused to do this: aggregation and exclusion.

In aggregation small bits of seemingly harmless data are collected piece-by-piece. Yet when strung together can reveal much more information than the victim intended. For instance let’s say you bought a book on cancer from Amazon. A few days later you buy a wig. From these two purchases one can infer you are undergoing chemotherapy! Often people that are treated with chemotherapy face hair loss during treatment. We learn from experience we don’t want our coworkers to know our health problems lest they lay us off!

The second problem is exclusion. In exclusion people are prevented from knowing how information collected about them is being used. Many governments around the world keep national databases of their citizens—collecting information about their own citizens without their consent. And the citizens have no say on how this information is collected. The issue with that is this will get in the way of fair due process in courts and more. Consider another case: we have little control over how companies share our data with each other outside of a toggling a few web buttons. There are privacy policies but as author Shoshana Zuboff admits every company occasionally breaks their own privacy policy to debug their own infrastructure.

Author Micheal W Lucas, an IT administrator turned self-publishing author, admits in his work that he at one point in his career had to read the personal corporate document of a customer. He tried his best to avoid remembering the information. Still the memories of him having to sift through the personal documents of customers during company troubleshooting drove him to launch his own self-hosted mail server (not recommended for tech-newbies use Tuta instead).

A third problem is secondary use: the exploitation of data originally collected for one purpose abused for another purpose without the subject’s consent. The following is a true story. During the US Civil Rights Movement the FBI wiretapped the communications of several US Civil Rights activists for their Communist ties. Martin Luther King Jr was one of them. Although the FBI was supposed to wiretap King’s conversations to use it against him in trial to convict him of potential Communist ties the FBI did something even nastier. They found out King was having an affair. So they sent a letter to King’s wife threatening to publicly release the details to the public if King did not kill himself (page 23 of Solove’s “Nothing to Hide”). This is the sort of blackmail J. Edgar Hoover did on others (including US Presidents). And horribly this is why people had trouble standing up to Hoover.

A fourth problem with lack of privacy in data collection is distortion. We all have experience being exposed to lies, deceit, and manipulation. When information about ourselves are collected only specific sides to the story can be presented—painting a misleading photo of a person. As a form of propaganda, politicians, artists, and the press have committed the sin of distortion since antiquity.

One of the worst cases of this is the 2003 Iraq WMD Intelligence Scandal. During the Iraq War US Intelligence cherry-picked information in favor of its political position: that Iraq was making weapons of “mass destruction”. US Intelligence even censored dissenting evidence from the United Nations. By deliberately showing only one side of evidence US Intelligence set up a show that made it look like Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.1 Imagine all the needless private information they gathered only to essentially fool the public.

This incident should make clear the true danger of distortion: getting innocent people hurt all for nothing. Secret police services working for corrupt governments like the Soviet Union were infamous for doing this. The mastermind behind the KGB, Russian secret police, once even said: “Show me the data and I will show you the crime”.2

The next fallacy we often hear is the all-or-nothing fallacy.

The All-or-Nothing Fallacy

The fallacy goes with this: I will give up my privacy if it will keep me safe.

To the NSA, which hid its activities from Congress until investigative journalist James Bamford revealed its inner workings to the public, this is a necessary trade-off. The NSA conducts surveillance activities on its own citizens daily. However Solove gives a strong refutation to the idea that forfeiting privacy is necessary for security.

Solove argues instead that judicial oversight allows government surveillance to be subject to oversight and sometimes a degree of limitation.

That’s how most constitutional and statutory protections work. Even the Fourth Amendment. As long as the government can somehow convince justices that an invasive search is necessary it can be done! A search on your home. Your computer. Your body after death. Literally anything as long as no judge stops them. This is a dark contrast to how justices stopped Robinson during the Polly Affair. Had it not been for them Robinson would have gotten away with ransacking homes and their quarters—even claiming lives with him with his militia.

Following the Fourth Amendment’s example surveillance laws restricts the act of surveillance by requiring judicial supervision. Law enforcement officials are required to report their surveillance activities to court to prevent surveillance abuses.

Too often polls asking US citizens about surveillance fail to account for warrants, court orders, and the other judicial aspects that are supposed to restrict surveillance. For example the following is a poll question from 2002 conducted by Pew Research Center:

Should the government be allowed to read emails and listen to phone calls to fight terrorism?

Below is yet another poll from 2005 from Ramussen Reports:

Should the National Security Agency be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States?

Too few Americans are educated on the cruciality of judicial oversight and regulation to avoid abuses of surveillance. According to Solove in most cases judicial oversight and regulation do not diminish a security measure that much. Yet this balance is rarely reviewed by the public probably due to ignorance. Instead the public thinks massive tradeoffs between protecting privacy and security must take place.

Up Next: Investigative Journalism Raises Awareness of Secret Surveillance

In the next article I will demonstrate how the investigative journalism work of people from the work of activiststo Edward Snowden has increased public sensitivity to government surveillance—leading up to the mass exodus from OpenAI to Claude.

Privacy and freedom of speech are the last lines of defense against tyranny. These were the beliefs of the founders of the United States such as John Adams.

In the past I have published articles on why the Fourth Amendment was written: colonists have spent decades suffering from home invasions at the hands of British customs officers.

At the time the Fourth Amendment was written privacy was a matter built upon physical reality: people despise when others search through their belongings in front of their face. So much did the Massachusetts colonists despise general search and seizures they even rioted over it.

That is why the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, despite their opposition to each other, agreed only specific search and seizure shall be allowed under a search warrant--an idea improvised by James Otis Jr during Paxton's Case.

Although the Fourth Amendment bans general warrants and unreasonable search and seizures it does not specify what kinds of search and seizures were allowed. The Fourth Amendment was never designed with the primary intent to stop all unreasonable search and seizures! It was designed, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, to weaken opposition to the ratification to the US Constitution--and it worked.

Still even the Federalists genuinely cared about protecting home privacy. Alexander Hamilton, Founder of the US and Federalist, helped pass the Excise Acts to punish any officer that violated the privacy of anyone and their belongings with hefty fines amounting close to $20,000 USD today! And the strategy worked!

Today privacy is a much more abstract concept than it was in the past. One of the few books worth purchasing in print that explains why is Whitfield Diffie and Landau's book Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption.

In the book both Diffie and Landau admit the US Government has invaded citizens' privacy over the last 70 years. Electronic surveillance has been abused by people in positions of power to discriminate against their political opponents. Politicians, civil rights activists, lawyers, their clients, civil rights activitists have been wiretapped. Wiretapping is the act of listening to someone's electronic conversations.

Since the Fourth Amendment was written at a time before digital communication our right to privacy when using them is in a gray area. It has taken more than a century for the idea that things less tangible than property are protected under it. In 1967 Supreme Court ruled the police have no right to wiretap without court authorization. Still by 1992 courts ruled cordless phones are available for wiretapping.

Like the Writs of Assistance wiretaps were rarely successful in convicting the target of surveillance. One of the works that explain how faulty privacy arguments led to the US’s downfall to a surveillance empire is Daniel J Solove’s book Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security. In his work Solove points out that during the 1940s and 1950s concerns of Soviet Union espionage led the US to launch surveillance programs against its own citizens.

In the US Federal Government's defense several of these investigations truly did catch several Soviet spies red-handed stealing business and government secrets including the US Atomic Bomb design.

However the ugly truth is organizations like the FBI conducted countless abuses of surveillance unchecked during most of the Cold War. According to Solove there was a dark reason for that. Congressman and even US Presidents were afraid to stand up to Hoover as he threatened even US Presidents with blackmail. Unfortunately this worked.

Only after Hoover's death during the WaterGate Scandal did Congress decide to investigate since Nixon misused service of officials from the FBI. A committee led by Frank Church revealed every president from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon misused government surveillance to obtain information about critics and political opponents.

As Hoover and Nixon from the WaterGate scandal demonstrate this information was meant to be used against them whenever they challenged whoever who was conducting surveillance.

Congress made two decisions in response. They first passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978. It was supposed to restrict the executive branch's power to conduct electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes.

In later articles I will demonstrate how even that was thoroughly abused.

By the 1986 Congress issued the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. This law aimed to protect emails, stored computer files, and communications records. However by now the law is out of date.

In 2001 Congress passed the Patriot Act in response to the 9/11 attacks. This act allowed the government to engage in several information a gathering programs. The NSA wiretapped phone calls between US citizens and people outside the US. The information the government collects in these programs is stored, analyzed, and sometimes disclosed. In 2013 NSA contractor revealed the full depths of how invasive these surveillance programs were. According to Bruce Schneier in his work Data and Goliath cloud services lost 23% of revenue after the Snowden leaks--demonstrating increased public distrust with web services that cooperate with the US Federal Government's surveillance programs.

As one of the most influential patrons of science and technology the government has a lot of power to protect or abuse security in a way few others can compete with. Vannevar Bush, founder of the NSF, convinced US President Franklin Roosevelt to ensure the government has close ties with scientists and innovators. His arguments were well thought out. Bush explained tech innovation is so expensive and time consuming that few private companies would be able to sustain research and development long enough until it finally produced useful products and services.

As a strong example consider AI. US Government sponsored research for AI began since 1956. It took until the 1980s for that to pay off with the invention of expert systems, autonomous vehicles, and private military command and control networks. The Internet itself began as a military-funded project named ARPANET. With initial plans as early as 1962 it took until the 1990s until Internet commerce took off.

Most startups only get a few years until investors give up on them. The government gives a vision decades. The US is fortunate it can cover the costs of research and development to fund such tech innovation. There are many reasons for that and I explain those reasons in my article series Why the US is #1 in Computing.

Yet the US Goverment is ill equipped to protect privacy in response to modern technology. The foundational amendments in the US Bill of Rights that protect privacy are primarily the Fourth, Fifth, and Solove argues even the First Amendments.

Even with these Amendments, FISA, and ECPA Solove argues the law fails to provide a good balance between privacy and security.

In the next part I will review Solove's arguments on why that's the case.

This article uses William J Cuddihy’s excellent historical reference titled The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 602-1791. This excellent reference was recommended by Daniel J. Solove. He is John Marshall Harlan Research Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School.

Solove points out this historical reference is used by US Supreme Court to review interpretations of the Fourth Amendment. For this reason Solove concludes it is indispensable to understand the origins of the US Fourth Amendment.

For those of you that have a university library account I strongly urge you to use that to purchase the book either at a discount or ideally for free as I did myself. Otherwise the Amazon affiliate link is the only other way to acquire the text.

The Polly Affair

After news spread of James Otis Jr.’s rebuttal of the Writs of Assistance few Massachusetts colonial members were sympathetic to them. And the Polly Affair is just one of several that made that clear.

The H.M.S. Maidstone

British customs officer, John Robinson, seized the famous sloop boat named Polly since it carried more molasses than the captain of the ship said was legal—a suspicion of smuggling. In response many of the colonists aboard the ship booed the writ of assistance and repeated Otis’s rebuttal of general warrants made during Paxton’s Case.

Robinson tried to get colonial justices to grant him a general warrant. However almost all colonial justices refused! Robinson next tried to get the colonial justices to grant him a specific warrant. Even that failed. One of the reasons for that was Robinson offered no court-viable evidence of suspicion for smuggling. Robinson did not even try to put his complaints in writing or even so much as swear his complaints under oath—crucial things you are supposed to do in a case for a warrant. Robinson’s behavior is a classic case of “unreasonable search and seizure”.

Eventually the judges finally allowed Robinson to search properties after Governor Francis Bernard, governor of Massachusetts, demanded the colonial justices assist him—even without a warrant. Even after that the colonial justices said he can only search properties without a warrant but with the local sheriff as a witness and a watchdog.

At first Robinson was successful in finding some smuggled molasses in John McWorter’s home—as much as ten percent of Polly’s cargo. Charles Paxton, the man featured in Paxton’s Case arrived to help Robinson with the search. But by the time Paxton arrived with a valid writ of assistance nightfall had come and the two had to wait a few more days before the search could resume. Of course by the time the search took place several days later the smuggled goods were gone.

An enraged Robinson stormed to the highest court of appeals in Massachusetts. He first charged the colonial justices with “not yielding him proper assistance”. In refutation the colonial justices complained Robinson was arrogant for refusing to first obtain a warrant or even a writ of assistance before searching someone’s property.

The colonial justices then let Chief Justice Hutchinson and Attorney General Edmund Trowbridge to make a final verdict. Both upheld the decision of the colonial justices.

To be fair it was Robinson’s fault that he was not patient enough to first at least get a writ of assistance before searching for the smuggled molasses. Unfortunately Robinson did not learn his lesson.

Instead he resorted to violence: fatal mistake. Robinson next presented his victims of search and seizure with armed militia. Unfortunately for Robinson angry mobs armed with swords and cutlasses began hunting for Robinson and Antrobus in retaliation!

Even Robinson admitted he escaped death by not being present where the mobs were.

Without even being present James Otis Jr proved influential here once again.

Assemblies of local magistrates have made up their minds to adopt Otis’s thesis: only specific search warrants were legal whereas general ones were not.

There were several more incidents of British customs officers attempting to search and seize smuggled goods under the The Writs of Assistance that I will skip here. Usually such attempts only landed with increased civil unrest and public outrage at the behavior of the British government. And rarely did The Writs ever succeed in convicting smugglers. Smugglers were usually smart enough to barricade or remove their smuggled goods in time before the authorities could find proof of them. Even if they were smuggled British customs officers surprisingly often failed to keep possession of them long enough to use them in trial (remember during the Polly Affair John McWorter simply removed the rest of the molasses even after they have been found in-between investigations).

Other colonies, inspired by Massachusetts, followed Massachusetts’s lead starting from 1767. And to prove that the British Public Record to this day record many writs of assistance but almost nothing to show the writs were exercised on the colonies before 1767. By 1768 British authorities admitted their search and seize attempts were failures. Back in Massachusetts British customs officers were welcomed with tar and feathering, angry mobs that freed seized items from the hands of the officers, and magristrates were threatened if they cooperated with the British.

By 1776 it was public knowledge smugglers in the colonies defiantly continued to smuggle goods even amongst the British customs officers. Smugglers like Malcom from the Malcom Affair publicly posted armed guards to deter anyone who dared mess with his merchandise. At which point the British customs officers made up their minds to not bother with such searches.

In summary Massachusetts lead the colonies by resisting the Writs by any means necessary—from legal parries to opening arms. Most colonies like Connecticut and Pennsylvania followed suit where jurists followed James Otis Jr’s interpretation of Coke’s words against home intrusion by declaring general warrants illicit and that they must be replaced with specific ones instead. The British found in dismay that all the Writs had done is weaken their own political support in the colonies. No doubt the judicial decisions and angry mobs presented in the Polly Affair were a major step towards the ratification of the Fourth Amendment.

Smuggled goods were not the only reason for resistance to the Writs of Assistance.

Up Next: The Wilkes Affair

In the next newsletter I will demonstrate that perceived threats to political dissension is a second reason the colonists resisted general warrants. The Wilkes Affair is an outstanding case study of just that. Although the Wilkes Affair took place in Great Britain I will demonstrate how news of the scandal spread amongst the colonists like wildfire.

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For my readers here that are privacy advocates the Fourth Amendment must hold dear to them. Below is transcript of the Fourth Amendment:

At face value we see the text protects people from home invasions and property theft unless there is “probable cause”—which is today enforced through a search warrant.

The history of the Fourth Amendment is built on a long history of home intrusions and property theft that took place in Great Britain. A century and a half before the US Fourth Amendment was written Great Britain passed laws preventing general search warrants. These gave the British Government the right to invade anyone’s home at will. The British government would have to struggle to get judges to approve of a search warrant targeting a specific house. These laws were passed in Great Britain by the 1500s after hundreds of unpopular general warrants allowed the government to invade the homes and privacy of citizens.

Although Great Britain developed strong protections against general search warrants no such protections existed in the US colonies before the US Revolutionary War. Unsurprisingly several scandals took place that US Supreme Court still researches when reviewing court cases involving the Fourth Amendment.

In this article I will explore the history behind the Fourth Amendments ratification. Throughout the remainder of this article I will give the brief, relevant history from Cuddihy’s work that leads up to the moment the Fourth Amendment was ratified and how effective it was against home intrusions.

Relevant Legal Scholars on Search and Seizure

Sir Edward Coke

Sir Edward Coke was the earliest of the legal scholars cited by the US colonists to defend the right of a person’s home privacy even if it meant resorting to violence in extreme cases. Many colonists were familiar with the famous phrase “A man’s house is his castle” often attributed to legal scholars such as Coke. Coke explains the civil rights a person has over his home against thieves of any kind. To Coke and the colonists that even meant the government1:

In the decades before the American revolution several people acted on Coke’s principles best captured in the above quote including Founders like John Adams. I will later show you who they were.

Sir William Blackstone

Sir William Blackstone was an outstanding legal scholar who wrote a highly influential commentary series titled Commentaries on the Laws of England. This reference is reviewed by US Supreme Court whenever discussions on historical interpretations of the law emerge. It has been read by Founders of the United States including John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. US President Abraham Lincoln also read this reference in his self-education.

In his commentary Blackstone defined “eavesdropping” as the act of listening “under walls or windows, or the eaves of the house, to hearken after discourse (eavesdrop after participating in a face-to-face conversation), and thereupon to frame slanderous and mischievous lies”2

Both of these critical legal scholars’ works were heavily studied by colonists in the decades before the US Revolution as the British Empire gave out general warrants against colonists. What were those general warrants issued for and why did colonists fight back?

Excessive Taxes Lead to Smuggling

The British were motivated to start the US colonies for business interests. Colonies ever since as early as Jamestown were sponsored by the Virginia Company. These companies wanted to profit off of the colonists and their labor. That is why the British Empire sponsored the creation of these colonies?

Unfortunately the colonists suffered from laws such as the Townshend Acts. It is no accident four of the US Founders were business leaders themselves. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison all managed businesses whereas Adams was an attorney that sided with such business leaders to protect their businesses from high taxes.

In response one of the ways colonies resisted the high taxes was by smuggling goods. This would help avoid the high taxes but came with the cost of having to hide the smuggled goods from British law enforcement.

Some smugglers were caught or at first suspected of smuggling. Several general warrants were issued known as the infamous Writs of Assistance.

Paxton’s Case and the Writs of Assistance

The first documented case of general warrants in the colonies began in Massachusetts. In 1755 English governor Charles Paxton received intelligence that a warehouse belonging to a friend and member of the council secretly stored Spanish smuggled iron. Governor Shirley, who began issuing the Writs of Assistance, issued Writs of Assistance both in England and in the Massachusetts colony—suspecting the iron to be hidden in both places.

Many Boston and Salem merchats were not happy to hear this news—because such investigations may reveal their own smuggled goods. That is why an organization of these merchants titled the Society for Promoting Trade and Commerce Within the Province searched for the best attorney from Boston they could find to hear their case against British customs officers before British Superior Court. By mid-January 1761 the Society for Promoting Trade and Commerce within the Province chose attorney James Otis Jr. Otis was the British Crown’s chief attorney in Massachusetts and the son of one of the colony’s most powerful politicans. Meanwhile British customs officers chose Jeremiah Gridley as their attorney.

In Paxton’s Case Otis gave the famous statement that the British Empire had no right to issue general warrants. Instead they only had the right to issue warrants targeting specific people and their homes. Otis’s argument remains an inspiration for the Fourth Amendment’s restriction against general warrants. When we see the text of the Fourth Amendment demands the warrant can only be issued under probable cause and the exact persons, things, and places to be seized from must be specified. This restriction against general warrants remains the Fourth Amendment’s true achievement to this day.

Otis also argued the Writs of Assistance violated natural rights—which defied reason. To Otis natural law based on reason was more important than English common law. Otis drew his arguments from several legal scholars including Edward Coke who also declared general warrants were illegal in his famous work Institutes of the Laws of England volume 4, pp. 176-77. Although Coke never said it Otis argued Coke’s interpretation of Magna Carta Article 39 implied only specific search warrants were allowed instead.

Influence of Otis’s Brief on the American Colonies

Otis’s brief unfortuantely failed to convince the British Superior Court of his arguments but that does not matter here. What matters is that Otis’s arguments influenced the colonies to believe that a government only has the right to issue specific warrants. For three months after the Paxton Case the Boston Gazette commended Otis for his arguments—warning that all of the colonists’ properties would be seized as the British Government continued to exercise the Writs of Assistance. Here is an excerpt that captures the terror the Gazette felt:

The colonists were swooned by the news of Otis’s words against British customs officers. Otis Jr and his father quickly won unanimous approval as colonial representatives of the Massachusetts colony (the colonial House of Representatives existed before the Declaration of Independence was signed). Otis soon led a campaign to convince Massachusetts legislature to reject all writs of assistance. In this regard Otis succeeded on April 17, 1762 when the British lost influence over the legislative body of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On that day Otis’s supporters convinced the body to dismiss all British representatives in favor of the Writs of Assistance from the colonial Massachusetts House of Representatives for good. This weakened British factional influence over Massachusetts House of Representatives from that point on.3 Unfortunately the British still had ties in the Massachusetts Superior Court. And I will next explain how the colony reacted to Writs of Assistance during the Polly Affair.

Up Next: Hostility to General Search and Seizure in the Colonies

In the next article I will demonstrate how Otis’s words inspired the colonists to publicly resist the Writs of Assistance in acts of civil disobedience. These public demonstrations continue to be reviewed by US Supreme Court in court cases involving the Fourth Amendment to this day.

Did you know the Internet was invented to allow the US Military to react to news of Nuclear Warfare against the Soviet Union within a moment’s notice. If this fact surprises you read on to find out why.

In my last article I explained how both nuclear weapons and modern computing were invented hand-in-hand with each other.

In this article I explain the major development threats of nuclear destroying the world had on computer technology: the invention of the Internet.

By 1957 both the US and USSR had produced enough nuclear weapons to destroy the modern world as we know it.1

Operation PaperClip: The Dawn of the Cold War

One of the best books I found that documents how nuclear threats led to the invention of the modern Internet in the US is Sharon Weinberger’s The Imagineers of War. I strongly recommend reading this book to learn more about the story of the Internet during the Cold War. Weinberger is an excellent author explaining the backstory. Throughout this blog I will frequently cite her account and highly recommend you acquire a copy to supplement your learning.

Weinberger explains that shortly after the world witnessed the bombing of Japan both the US and the USSR sent intelligence committees to Germany to steal Germany’s rocket technology. Both the US and USSR knew that whoever would be the next leading military nation would be the one that could launch “long-range, reliable rockets” that could target any other nation over the seas—also known as an intercontinental ballistic missile. Little could be done to stop one once launched. It is like trying to stop a bullet once fired in the sky. Whereas the USSR prioritized manpower the US focused on capturing the leading minds of rocket science: Werner von Braun’s rocket science team.2

Originally the US Federal Government was reluctant to continue investing in the development of nuclear weapons after World War II as budgets were tight. But with the first detonation of an atomic bomb by the USSR in 1949, the launching of Soviet Union rockets that could fly longer ranges and carry heavier loads, the fall of many countries under the grip of the USSR, the fall of China to Communism, and the rise of Communism in North Korea—the US began to really feel the safety of the US was at odds against a growing Communist Empire.3

By 1952 the US detonated its first hydrogen bomb: Ivy Mike. With the equivalent power of 10.4 Megatons of TNT Ivy Mike was over a thousand times stronger than the nuclear bomb detonated at Hiroshima. After the US later figured out how to reduce the physical size of the weapon it could be packed into an intercontinental nuclear missile and launched. Even if the weapon did not accurately hit the intended target the blast radius would be enough to make up for a lack of accuracy.4

It should be thus no surprise that when President Eisenhower announced the US’s plan to launch a small satellite the USSR quickly developed their own: Sputnik. Like the US the USSR was concerned the US was racing develop their own intercontinental ballistic missiles to threaten the USSR.

Sputnik Drives The Launch of DARPA

At first it may seem incredible that by 1957 the USSR could rightfully claim it was ahead of the US in space technology with the successful launch of Sputnik. However having a centralized organization called the Communist Regime in the USSR has its advantages over a democratic one.

In an authoritarian regime like the USSR there were less people that were allowed to disagree with the Communist Party’s priorities in setting up a military state to fight against the US. Meanwhile democratic elections demanded giving people of different political views time to argue and make decisions.

Drew Pearson, a well-known writer for the Washington Merry-Go-Round column—did a great job capturing public fear of what Sputnik implied the USSR was capable of: “The same missile that launched the 184-pound Sputnik, our experts say, could also shoot a rocket 239,000 miles to the moon”.

In response to the launch of Sputnik President Dwight D. Eisenhower secretly authorized the formation of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on February 7, 1958. DARPA was formed eight months before National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) and had a secret mission: to prepare the US against future nuclear warfare against the USSR.5

The Founding of NASA

As the US watched the USSR launch more satellites into space—including one that carried a dog—everyone talked about how the USSR would one day be able to send real people into space. That includes people that can threaten the US with intercontinental ballistic missiles.

On August 15, 1958, to help the US compete with the USSR in that regard Roy Johnson authorized Werner von Braun to begin a program that would allow US citizens to travel to space through rocket.

The United States Federal Government decided that the mission to put US citizens into space must belong to a public, civilian agency and not a secretive military one like DARPA. That is why on October 1st, 1958, DARPA handed all their satellite programs to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).6

The Cuban Missile Crisis Births ARPANet

On October 16, 1962 US President John F Kennedy discovered nuclear missiles housed in Cuba. By that time Cuba fell to Communism led by Fidel Castro—a ruler that Kennedy had attempted to assasinate countless times. Kennedy’s administration concluded the Cuban nuclear missiles can strike the White House within merely 13 minutes. Not a lot of time to react.

The Cuban Missile Crisis throttled the US into DEFCON 2—which is only one alert level away from true nuclear war. Indeed there has been no event in the US where the US was closer to nuclear warfare than this one. Amidst the mass panic military officials could finally see just how reliant military commanders had become on computers. Yet people noticed the biggest hurdle to fully adopting computer technology was the difficulty of sending messages from one machine to another remote machine. The Crisis birthed interest in remote machines speaking to each other through electronic communication. After all how can you control your nuclear weapons if you cannot share information through the very machines that controlled them in real time?7

J.C.R. Licklider Helps Birth ARPANET: The Precursor to the Internet

Trained in pyschology, Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider became interested in computers when he first interacted with one at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. At the lab Licklider was tasked with helping the US connect twenty-three air-defense sites. The computer system, known as Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, was designed to help humans calculate the best way to respond to an incoming Soviet bomber attack.

Although useless by the time the USSR made their own production-ready intercontinental ballistic missiles, SAGE left an impresson upon Licklider. Before SAGE computers were machines that you fed punch cards and waited to spit out answers. SAGE was the first computer system where users were expected to interact with the live machine for long streches of time. SAGE displayed visual information on consoles. Users would interact with the consoles using physical controls.

Licklider had the foresight to see a future where humans would interact with personal computers that fit on their desktops instead of taking up entire rooms. Moreso several distinct users would simultaneously perform distinct tasks on the same machine: a concept called time-sharing. Licklider documented his vision in his article “The Truly SAGE System ; or, Toward a Man-Machine System for Thinking”.

DARPA sponsored programs at MIT. It was at DARPA-sponsored MIT Laboratories that famous Internet technologies including electronic mail were invented.

Before leaving DARPA Licklider chose Ivan Sutherland to replace him in his task of establishing a computer network.8A scientist working for DARPA named Ivan Sutherland wanted to convince researchers at the University of California Los Angeles to create the first timesharing computer network featuring three of UCLA’s computers. However at the time UCLA researchers were scared of future hackers compromising their machines and using up their scarce computer resources. Disgruntled Sutherland allowed Robert Taylor to take over.

Although none of the scientists I mentioned were happy to see their project was underfunded and overlooked this was a blessing in disguise. It gave the researchers a free reign to research and experiment. There were downsides too: often these were researchers were overlooked and underpayed.9

I will next explain the political actions that led to major developments of the Internet

The Invention of Network Packet Switching

By 1964 there were concerns that neither long-distance telephone nor even military command and control computer networks would survive a nuclear attack.

The main issue was most of the centralized switching facilities would be destroyed in the attack. Think of these facilities as a bridge that allows communication.

In 1964 Paul Baran, a researcher for RAND Corporation, was standardizing a technique for machines to communicate through ARPANET in a manner that can survive a nuclear attack. The key insight was that there should be no centralized switches and could operate even if many links and switching nodes were ruined. standardized network packet switching.

This is a concept now called distributed communication. Baran also invented the concept of packet network switching: the idea that information should be split into fragments. Each fragment would be first be stored by a machine on the network. The machine would then calculate the most efficient route to the destination machine and then forward the packet as such.

In 1969 Baran’s distributed communication network was tested at UCLA. At first researchers treated it as an academic research project where they shared computers remotely—indeed an implementation of the timesharing system that researchers like JCR Licklider envisioned.

Thankfully by 1971 it evolved into a messaging system. Against everyone’s expectations people increasingly relied on computer networks to sending all kinds of information.

In 1983 the US made the decision to split the network into two: MILNET for use by the US Military and ARPANET.10

University Experiments Birth Modern Internet Technology

By the late 20th century American universities already earned a reputation for their indispensable role in birthing modern computer technology—going as far back as the ENIAC machine. Several other computer networks were formed—the most important being USENET by AT&T and the later NSFNET in 1985. USENET made UNIX a standard for microcomputers and helped make the C programming language. Today GNU/Linux continues to be an operating system used by developers. By 1985, the National Science Foundation launched NSFNET to allow academic researchers to communicate their ideas.

NSFNET: The Backbone of the Modern Internet

NSFNET linked computers owned by researchers and educators at universities in the United States. In 1985 Dennis Jennings made the decision to standardize the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocols. Steve Wolff realized that NSFNET had to allow for the tranmission of academic research and that the Wide Area Network had to be free from federal funding. Wolff’s insight that the US needed quick exchange of academic research most definitely played a crucial role in advancing US technology.

To support Wolff’s insight I will share that by mid-1987 researchers used the network so frequently that it became congested—unable to serve everyone’s needs.

The National Science Foundation encouraged regional networks to convince the layman to subscribe to Internet service. The economics of scale would lower Internet costs for everyone.11 In a future blog post I will explain how the economics of scale works in detail.

IBM and MCI Help Build the Modern Internet

Both IBM and MCI invested their own employees and technical expertise to improve the throughput of NSFNET. Both companies wanted to earn a reputation for building NSFNET knowing this will help them win customers over at institutions to build and maintain their computer networks.

IBM helped NSFNET develop affordable hardware/software compatible with TCP/IP — the networking standards Dennis Jennings made official in 1985. Before TCP/IP IBM used their own proprietary protocol for network communication. But when IBM realized NSFNET made the decision to standardize TCP/IP they knew they were missing on a big commercial opportunity: IBM machines at the time would be unable to interconnect IBM machines on university campuses and get reasonable performance without being TCP/IP compliant. By 1986 with IBM’s help most university campuses ran computer networks operating on TCP/IP. MCI developed high-speed networking cables to transmit data quickly—ensuring NSFNET was reliable and no one was left hung up from network congestion.

The Birth of Silicon Valley

By the 1990s NSFNET was reliable enough to allow for nationwide e-commerce. In the next blog post I will explain the rise of Silicon Valley.

Did you know the US race to develop nuclear weapons first led to the modern Information Age? If not read on to find out how!

In 1938 three Nazi German scientists conducted a nuclear experiment. They bombarded Uranium atoms with neutrons and made an unexpected discovery: it was possible to split the nucleus of the chemical element Uranium into two smaller nuclei. Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, and Fritz Strassman eventually realized they had discovered nuclear fission. Nuclear fission released massive energy and neutrons. The neutrons released from one atom splitting can next be used to split more atoms: a chain reaction. An unchecked chain reaction would result in a massive explosion.1

The German scientists met physicist Niels Bohr to reveal their findings. Niels Bohr rushed to pass on the findings at a scientific conference in Washington, D.C. By March 1940 researchers discovered Uranium-235 was the uranium isotope capable of delivering a fission chain reaction. Researchers next struggled to discover how a chain reaction could be made for atomic purposes. To do that enough Uranium-235 had to be collected from natural Uranium to support a self-sustaining chain reaction. The minimum amount is known as critical mass.2

It is academic tradition to freely exchange information to benefit the human race. But lead American scientists including Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller convinced the American and British scientific community to keep the Manhattan Project a secret lest Germany begin their own nuclear weapons program. After a stir of disagreement both Europe and the United States agreed to ban all public research on nuclear weapons by 1940 CE.3

Despite US and European attempts to censor atomic research news of the discovery of nuclear fission spread in Germany. Many physicists that fled Nazi Germany to te US were concerned. At first US physicists struggled to get the attention of the US Government. Leo Szilard convinced Albert Einstein to write a famous letter to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.45

President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded by forming the Manhattan Project.6 In 1940. The world watched in terror as Nazi Germany quickly conquered other European nations. In 1941 the National Defense Research Committee led by Vannevar Bush received the MAUD Report. This famous report by the British MAUD Committee reported ten kilograms of enriched Uranium-235 would be enough to produce a nuclear bomb.7

In December 1941 the US was surprised by Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, authorized as commander-in-chief of America in World War II, authorized Vannevar Bush to oversee the creation of America’s first atomic bomb. Fueled by the fear that Germany was ahead of the US in nuclear weapons at the time (a fear that turned out to be wrong) the US raced to make the first bomb with what they felt was too little time.89

At the time Roosevelt simply wanted Bush to oversee research and development of the bomb—never for production use10. But by December 1942 the US suffered several military defeats that compelled Roosevelt to authorize the making of the first US Atomic Bomb for production use.11

The Manhattan Project in Los Alamos was formed to invent the bomb’s official design.12

The Twin Births of Modern Computing and the Atomic Bomb

In 1931 John von Neumann, a Hungarian-born mathematician, joined the Princeton University faculty.1314 Neumann would soon meet Lieutenant Herman Goldstine at the University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Electrical Engineering. Goldstine and his team were engineering a computer machine to assist the US Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory.15 The invention of new technology to help US war efforts had an unintended side effect: it required humans to solve thousands of tedious calculations in differential equations to fire artillery.16

To assist the US Ballistic Research Laboratory with these calculations the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer was built by November 1945.17 The ENIAC featured Herman Hollerith’s punch-card technology standardized by IBM.18To ensure the targeted goal of 333 calculations per second von Neumann proposed the now industry-standard von Neumann Architecture. What was revolutionary about this architecture is the idea that computer programs should be stored in memory along with the computer’s data. This made the computer reprogrammable. Prior to the existence of Johnny’s design computers had to be manually rewired to change their programming—wasting countless hours. Completed too late the ENIAC was never used by the Ballistic Research Laboratory directly. Instead the ENIAC was used to speed up the development of the first hydrogen bomb.19

For the remainder of the 20th century the von Neumann Architecture would become the standard computer architecture first in the military, then in US Federal Government offices, the US industry, and eventually the world.20

Nuclear Espionage Births Interest in US Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity began with the US Military’s concerns of espionage targeting military secrets—the US Atomic Bomb is arguably the first documented case study of espionage in the 20th century that drove the US to later invest in computer technology such as encryption to protect such sensitive military secrets. It is obvious that the leakage of the bomb’s design posed an irrecoverable threat to US safety. As a matter of national security President Franklin D Roosevelt and other scientists tasked the US Military to keep news of the bomb a tightly-kept secret—believing this would prevent spies from Germany and Japan from stealing the bomb’s design.21

People that wanted to work for the US Government to build the bomb were first screened for family-ties to Axis-controlled areas. If so the person was rejected.22 Germany, Japan, and the USSR all made attempts to send spies to the US to steal the bomb’s design. Only the USSR succeeded. And there is a reason for that. Emigrants to the US were much more sympathetic to Communist ideologies than they were to Germany and Japan’s nationalist-pride fueled campaings. In a future blog article I will explain why emigrants would sympathize with the USSR despite the horrible crimes against humanity they committed. You must understand why such people exist. It is because of political disagreements like this that the Nuclear Age continued—giving birth to the Computer and Cybersecurity industries with them.23

For now understand hundreds of US citizens voluntarily gave away military secrets, including the design of the US Atomic Bomb, to USSR spies because of these sympathies. Even many physicists were members of the American Communist Party and shared secret information with them. The Red Scarce in the media and fictional literature is depicted as a mass hysteria comparable to other fanatical moments in history gone wrong—but the cold truth is serious evidence of espionage was brought forth during this time. In future blog articles I will clarify how that led the US to invest in Internet security.24 The US launched programs such as the National Security Agency to detect such attempts at espionage—where spies often concealed their messages using cryptography.25

For now understand that such Communist sympathies are what allowed USSR spies such as Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to steal the secret design of the US Atomic Bomb to the USSR. For the remainder of the 20th century the world watched in terror as both the US and USSR produced nuclear weapons in mass number—ready to destroy the modern world as we know it in the flash of a second.

In the next blog article I will explain how the discover of USSR satellite Sputnik terrified the US Federal Government into birthing the modern Internet with the founding of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Who Should Read This

This blog post is for anyone that is trying to protect their privacy against government surveillance of our consumer behavior. I see no other rational reason anyone should care.

If you are interested in protecting your privacy against companies that spy on our consumer behavior then you should stop reading this article immediately and instead invest in a virtualized debit card service such as privacy.com. A virtualized debit card service will make it more difficult for other companies to monitor your spending behavior. Virtualized debit cards are also much easier to use and allow you to put in any name and billing address you wish. However your bank and the government will still be able to monitor all of your spending habits.

Why Some People Are Concerned With Government Surveillance

Throughout history governments have abused their power to spy on their citizens to get rid of anyone they do not like. Kings used to search and seize people’s assets at will. The Founders of the United States were aware of this. At the insistence of the Anti-Federalists the Fourth Amendment was made to protect US citizens from unreasonable search and seizure.

In the 20th century governments such as the Russian secret police spied on people before convicting them of “crimes against the state” and sending them to gulags—which were Russian concentration camps. Many met their deaths under these harsh conditions. In many cases the government would make up crimes as they collected data on people they did not like. As Bruce Schneier pointed out Laventry Beria—the architect behind the KGB police—said “show me the person and I will show you the crime”.

Today governments including those of the Five Eyes Alliance all spy on each other’s citizens and share their surveillance data with each other. China and Russia are both infamous for spying on their own citizens. In China the Chinese Government exploits Domain Name System to spy on the traffic of their citizens—even censoring content that should be legal under Chinese law. To help circumvent these restrictions a citizen may wish to subscribe to a privacy-respecting VPN such as Mullvad. But of course the citizen cannot just pay in fiat currency. A good substitute would be a privacy-respecting currency such as Monero

So for those of you concerned about the government spying on your spending habits I assume you live in a country that has abused its powers to censor, spy, and discriminate against people they do not like--and one way governments do that is by monitoring the Internet Activity of their citizens. This article is for these people that are trying to protect their privacy online.

I assume you are not in a life-threatening situation—in which case you should not even be on the Internet nor reading this in the first place.

Why Was Cryptocurrency Invented?

Let me start with why cryptocurrency was invented.

Cryptocurrency was invented in 2008 by an unknown author of the “Bitcoin Whitepaper”. Whoever the author(s) of this whitepaper were were frustrated with the cause and outcome of the 2008 Global Recession. During the 2008 Global Recession, US housing and lending markets crashed--causing a global bank panic. Real banks failed. The FDIC had to step in and replenish people’s money. Unsurprisingly, people lost faith in the health of the market, and people stopped paying for goods and services as much as they normally did. Since the US has a massive influence on international banking, this has caused financial issues for many around the world.

When bank panics like this the US prints more money and grants it to banks first. The US Federal Government does this in the hope that banks will lend more--stimulating economic growth. Unfortunately, banks still did not lend as much as the US Government hoped in the Great Recession. Without money being granted to people as an investment, money cannot be easily spent to help the economy grow. This causes more money to circulate. The easier it is for a person to obtain money,, the less valuable the money. Even if $1 USD remains $1 USD you will find yourself being able to buy fewer items with it as prices rise. This is a social event known as inflation. Consider the price of gas in 1920 vs 2026:

As we can see modern gas prices are drastically higher than they were 100 years ago--in fact modern gas prices are over 10X more expensive today than back in 1926! If such a sharp rise took place in a few years it would ruin the US economy beyond repair. But since it happened gradually the damage is less severe.

The creator(s) of Bitcoin were tired of how federal governments and banks hack financial systems in their favor at the expense of the public. They believed that a peer-to-peer online system of payments where payments did not need to be verified by a “central authority” like a bank would be a solution to the problem.

How Bitcoin Works

Bitcoin was designed to be treated as “digital gold”. If the creators wanted Bitcoin to be treated as a precious metal why did they not recommend people to just use precious metals as currency. Well, even the prices of precious metals are manipulated by centralized authorities. The creator(s) hoped Bitcoin’s design would make it resistant to that. To do this Bitcoin was designed to only allow a finite hard-limit of 21 million coins total in circulation. To prevent people from counterfeiting Bitcoin each Bitcoin payment must be verified by a community of paid volunteers known as “Bitcoin nodes”. These nodes had a machine, or rented computing resources, to verify if a Bitcoin payment was valid. To verify each submitted Bitcoin payment a paid volunteer, which can also be an owner of a Bitcoin node, must solve a math puzzle that is believed to be difficult to solve. It is our faith in the difficulty of solving this puzzle, the Nakomoto Consensus Algorithm.

The Nakomoto Consensus Algorithm: What Makes Bitcoin Payments Faithful

To solve this puzzle a miner must guess a random number, or nonce. The nonce must be appended to the payment information. Next the payment information, including the nonce, is applied to a mathematical function that prints an identification number that is unique to the payment. It must be difficult for people to predict what input produced a known identification number--a concept known as preimage resistance. It must also be difficult to find a second distinct input that produces the same known identification number--a concept known as collision resistance.

With these properties it would be difficult for attackers to make up payment information that solves the Nakomoto Consensus puzzle. Had this been the case people would be able to write programs that can solve the Nakomoto puzzle in mass-number--destroying faith in Bitcoin’s ability to avoid counterfeit coins. Although Bitcoin was meant to resist government influence it is ironic the creator(s) of Bitcoin have chosen to use mathematical functions to protect financial secrets standardized by the US Federal Government--known as cryptographic algorithms. The cryptographic algorithm, known as SHA-256--a message digest algorithm--was designed by the National Security Agency--an organization that real American citizens have criticized for spying on people around the world, including American citizens.

The US Federal Government’s Unintended Role in Bitcoin’s Creation

Why would the Bitcoin creator(s) use cryptographic functions to protect secrets that were made by a federal government--the very entity they are trying to protect influence from? Why would they trust an organization infamous for spying on their own people behind their back?!!

The answer is that the US Federal Government has released the designs of these algorithms to the public--welcoming scrutiny from academic professionals around the world.

After the academic community released attacks against earlier versions of SHA-256--the NSA released SHA-256 to be resistant to said attacks. To this day researchers conclude SHA-256 continues to be resistant to attack. The US standardizes its cryptographic algorithms under the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS).

As I mentioned earlier, SHA-256’s main property is preimage resistance. Collision resistance is also important--the idea that it is difficult to find two distinct documents that map to the same SHA-256 hash output. A third important property is that it is difficult to find a second distinct document that maps to a known hash output of a known first document. Below are diagrams to help you understand these concepts:

If you want to learn more about which US Federal Government cryptography was used in Bitcoin’s design, I would strongly recommend “Serious Cryptography: 2nd Edition” by Jeanne-Phillipe Aumasson.

Let’s go back to the Nakamoto Consensus Algorithm. I just explained why SHA-256 is trustworthy. I also explained payments are hashed such that the last several number of required digits is zero. The brilliance of this system is that for each extra trailing zero required the miner has to make twice the number of guesses to solve the puzzle! Bitcoin was designed to scale the number of trailing zeroes required as more miners participated--requiring the puzzle to get harder to solve to avoid counterfeiting coins.

Once a miner solves a puzzle and presents the solution owners of Bitcoin full nodes verify the solution is correct. To verify the solution is correct a full node simply rehashes the payment information, checks that the SHA-256 hash matches the proposed hash the miner has pledged solves the puzzle, and double-checks the SHA-256 hash has the required number of trailing zeroes. Once all of this is verified the Bitcoin payment is considered valid. As long as 2/3 of nodes acknowledge the payment as valid it is difficult for the attacker to trick the public into thinking a payment is invalid.

Simply verifying each payment is not enough. Since money’s nature is to pass from one person to another, a complete record of each and every coin’s history traveling from one person to another must be recorded to not lose coins on the network. Such a record is known as a ledger.

This immediately brings forth a new problem--how do you stop people from tampering the ledger! Imagine if someone simply reassigns the destination addresses for payments. If that happens an attacker can steal money from everyone else’s wallet free of charge! To prevent this Bitcoin enforces a rule that only the longest chain of verified payments is the true ledger of the Bitcoin network. While finding a solution to the Nakomoto Consensus. To make this hard the previous hash for a set of Bitcoin payments--or block of payments--is actually part of the payload for the currentmost Bitcoin payment block--chaining hashes of payment blocks together (hence why Bitcoin is called a blockchain):

The 51% Attack

With this system the only way to counterfeit Bitcoins is to somehow solve Nakomoto puzzles faster than the entire community of Bitcoin miners. And to do that an attacker needs to hijack enough Bitcoin mining machines to control more than 50% of the hashing.

There are two reasons why this is going to be very hard:

1. The global hash rate for Bitcoin is massive.

2. Anyone with access to a machine’s computing resources can participate in mining. Remember access to machines is controlled by authentication and authorization (to varying degrees of success!)

To give you an idea of just how hard that is here is the current global Bitcoin hashrate as of April 25, 2026:

As the chart above makes clear the Bitcoin global hash rate is rising exponentially with time--a testament to the durability of the Nakamoto consensus algorithm.

One zettahash/second is equal to 10^21 Nakamoto puzzle solutions/second. Good luck compromising enough machines to hijack the chain!

How 51% Attacks Allow Double-Spending

Once you compromise enough machines, you can fork the Bitcoin blockchain and start forging your own Bitcoin payments to a limited degree. In double-spending the attacker spends the same Bitcoin that was at first spent on the original Bitcoin blockchain elsewhere.

During a 51% Attack the attacker’s fork becomes the new longest chain--therefore the original Bitcoin payment the attacker made becomes null-and-void. The new Bitcoin payment the attacker made is what is considered valid. The attacker can also deny confirming others’ in-progress transactions--a denial of service on the Bitcoin blockchain. If the attacker wishes they can try to deny as many transactions as possible--rendering the Bitcoin network useless as a means of payment.

What 51% Attacks Cannot Do

You cannot do the following with a 51% Attack:

1. Mint coins without limit. The attacker cannot violate the 21-million hard-limit since that is the consensus amongst owners of Bitcoin Core full nodes. To circumvent that the attacker will have to next hijack control over majority of full nodes. Still, the attacker can assign newly minted coins to the attacker’s own wallet before the 21 million limit is reached.

2. Steal coins from others’ wallets. Without knowledge of the private key the attacker cannot steal your coins even with an active 51% attack.

3. The older a transaction is the harder it will be for the attacker to reverse the transaction. This is why multiple confirmations reduce a payment’s vulnerability to 51% Attack.

Private Keys: Safeguarding Your Net Worth

Bitcoin is built-on public-key cryptography. In the case of Bitcoin that means you--the Bitcoin owner--is responsible for keeping a large number a secret. That secret is your Bitcoin private key. You *never* share it with anyone--not your family nor your friends nor your cryptocurrency exchange nor bank. If anyone learns what your Bitcoin private key is they can spend your Bitcoins without your permission--even if they did not also steal your Bitcoin wallet--regardless of whatever form it is in (software or hardware wallet it does not matter). Storing the private key has been a difficult social problem. In the past real people lost massive amounts of cryptocurrency from recklessness, compromise of one’s wallet (they probably used a hot wallet--a cryptocurrency wallet that has Internet Access), or even from real 51% Attacks (easier to attack smaller cryptocurrency networks than larger ones).

One of the best ways to protect your private key is to use a cold hardware wallet. This is a dedicated computer that stores the private key using specialized hardware to protect the key from malware. And I will soon discuss why the OneKey Classic 1S and more so the OneKey Pro is a viable option.

Benefits of Cryptocurrency Use

Private Spending

Professor Shoshana Zuboff from Harvard University wrote an excellent book titled ”The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”. In her work she argued online payments made it possible for businesses and governments to monitor a consumer’s behavior. This is why companies and governments can predict your future consumer behavior and manipulate it: they can see what you are spending on.

On the Internet you will hear common promises that “Bitcoin payments are anonymous”. I am sorry to tell you that simply using cryptocurrency alone does not guarantee that payments are either anonymous or private.

The good news is that there is a way to do it but you will have to work harder than the average online spender to protect your privacy. I will discuss how to spend cryptocurrency privately to protect your consumer behavior much later in this article.

Profit from Cryptocurrency Trading

If you have already heard of cryptocurrency there is a very good chance someone taught you can make money trading one cryptocurrency for another. The trick is doing this in such a way where you trade for low-value coins that become more valuable in the near future. The metal you receive will be worth much more than the one you gave away in the future--making you richer!

Take a look at the following chart:

Since Ethereum grew in price faster than Bitcoin. If in 2016 you traded $100 USD worth of Bitcoin for $100 ETH (assume no financial loss from transaction and exchange fees) you would have ~$130,000 USD worth of ETH in 2026!

This is why people are motivated to trade cryptocurrency coins--treating them like trading precious metals.

If you are interested in learning how to trade cryptocurrency as an investment I would strongly recommend Glen Goodman’s book "Crypto Trading”. In his book Goodman argues one should learn Technical Analysis to profit from cryptocurrency trading--simply holding does not pay--trading wisely does.

How to Purchase Cryptocurrency

There are several good options to purchase cryptocurrency. The most convenient is purchasing from a centralized cryptocurrency exchange. These are websites owned by companies that allow one to trade cryptocurrency any time of day on-demand. Many of these exchanges even have API services to allow one to trade using computer programs--program wisely!

If you are a beginner I would recommend making an account with the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange first. I found this cryptocurrency exchange to have the best options to safeguard your account from thieves--including support for strong Multi-Factor Authentication using Universal Second Factor Authentication.

If you are using a cryptocurrency exchange I would strongly encourage finding one that offers the option to protect one’s account with Universal Second Factor Authentication. I would also recommend one check if the website for the exchange is protected under Domain Name Systems Security Extensions--this will ensure that an attacker does not redirect you to the attacker’s site even if you type in the domain correctly. Kraken offers both.

Kraken even offers the ability to receive Pretty Good Privacy emails--this will help you tell if anyone sends you a phishing email in Kraken’s name. If that happens someone can steal your Kraken login credentials by tricking you to visit the attacker’s website instead of Kraken’s real website.

Finally Kraken is one of the few exchanges that offers the purchase and sale of Monero (the best privacy-protecting cryptocurrency at the time of this writing)--combined this is one of the best exchanges that can help protect your privacy. I will talk more on how to do that soon.

Why Use a Cold (Offline) Hardware Wallet To Store Your Cryptocurrency

As I mentioned earlier a hardware wallet is the best way to protect your cryptocurrency assets from thieves. Certainly there are several software such as [Electrum](electrum.org) and even wallets on cryptocurrency exchange websites. Allow me to say this: the easier it is to access a wallet from the outside public Internet the sooner someone will try to steal it! Cryptocurrency is valuable and there are countless tales of people stealing them--such as from North Korean hackers.

I would never store cryptocurrency in a software wallet offered by an online exchange--those are most often hacked due to a software bug. The Chainalysis article I hyperlinked earlier makes that clear. What is astonishing is that even though these online services store their assets using hardware wallets attackers figure out a way to gain access to the assets stored in them. This is why it is not good enough to store your private key in just a hardware wallet. You must store it offline--not connected to a computer in any sense of the word when not in use. You will lose money if you do that for too long without withdrawing to a cold, hardware wallet. A mobile wallet is also a terrible idea--even if it stores the private key directly on your mobile phone. Your mobile phone is your second best attack vector after a browser extension--and it therefore should come as no surprise that mobile wallets are yet another hot target for cryptocurrency theft.

This is why you use a cryptocurrency hardware wallet such as OneKey.

Get Started with OneKey Classic 1S

OneKey is one of several cryptocurrency hardware wallets that I recommend here for beginners to cryptocurrency.

Below is a chart comparing the features of each major cryptocurrency hardware wallet.

How the Cold Hardware Wallets Compare

So let me guide you through the pros and cons of each wallet.

Audits: The First Thing You Look For

How do you know the software the cold hardware wallet ships with is safe? An audit by an independent third-party with reports of low risk is a good sign that is the case.

Let me start with OneKey Classic 1S. This wallet has been audited by WalletScrutiny in 2025--passing all 10 tests. It also has been audited by SlowMist by January 2024.

With all fairness all the other cold hardware wallets have been audited by independent third-party companies.

Heuristic Security: Did The Cold Wallet Survive Battle?

However not all of these hardware wallets are equal in protecting their users against the wild.

Here is table summarizing real incidents that took place against each wallet:

As we can see OneKey and Tangem faced the least problems in production for consumers.

It makes sense to next spend the time comparing OneKey and Tangem:

Tangem vs OneKey

I personally believed the following link was an excellent comparison vs Tangem and OneKey.

So Tangem, unlike OneKey, is a cold hardware wallet that stores the private key in what looks like a credit card. Like all other cold hardware wallets it has a Secure Element--a specialized microprocessor designed to be resistant to software-based attacks, cloning, or extraction of the key.

Unlike all the other cold hardware wallets it has the comparative advantage of being resistant to wireless and wired attacks. There is a downside to this: the user must install Tangem’s mobile wallet to use the Tangem key card. The issue with that is an attacker can trick users into downloadin phishing mobile apps.

This is what happened with Ledger victims in 2020. In 2020 hackers confiscated the emails of thousands of Ledger users. They next sent emails asking victims to download phishing apps of Ledger Live. Ledger Live is supposed to be the official mobile wallet app for Ledger. The attackers tricked victims to download the attackers’ fake version of Ledger Live.

This is one of the reasons why I insist with using verified desktop apps--especially if the cold hardware wallet vendor’s website allows one to download the desktop app directly--which Onekey does.

Since OneKey’s website--like many other cryptocurrency vendors--is protected under Domain Name Systems Security Extensions and HTTPS--we have reliable assurance that the desktop wallet we download is the true wallet software published by OneKey.

But what about making sure the copy of the wallet software binary we get is faithful to the source code of the wallet? To verify that we check if the wallet’s source code is open source, or available to the public, and that the binary file is a reproducible build.

Open Source: Assurance The Public Can See the Source Code

Open source software projects publish their source code to be reviewed by the public. There are many licenses such as MIT license or BSD license. Open source is a business strategy to gain customer trust. Both Trezor and OneKey publish their source under open source licenses.

I encourage you to choose privacy products that publish their source code under open source license. I am aware the writers of Building Secure Software admitted just because software is open source does not mean it is more secure--still in principle it is best because it makes it easier for people to find and report security bugs.

Reproducible Builds: How Do You Know the Source Code Matches the Binary

In the real world the source code must often be compiled to a binary executable. A binary executable is a file that is directly executed by your machine’s CPU. It is just a large file of 1s and 0s. The problem with converting source code to binary is that each time one edits the source code the binary file’s contents change too. This is a problem for security because customers need to know the binary executable they are running matches the manufacturer’s.

To verify this manufacturers often post the SHA-256 checksum along with the downloadable binary executable. If it does not then there is a risk the user does not have the correct binary executable. Who compiled the binary? An attacker? A random person on the Internet. Was there a mistake in recording the correct binary version?

I must admit that OneKey Classic 1S fell short of having a reproducible build compared to Trezor Safe 7 here. It would be nice if OneKey Classic 1S had a reproducible build for the latest version.

Backups and Recovery

NEVER backup your Bitcoin private key on a piece of paper, on your computer drive, and definitely not on a sticky note!

Countless people have suffered from cryptocurrency theft by now including The Wolf of Wall Street.

The best way to protect your master secret is to use Shamir Secret Sharing.

In this backup and recovery technique cryptography is used to split up the private key into, say, 3 pieces. Shamir Secret Sharing lets the secret-keeper decide how many pieces the recoverer must have to recover the original secret. For example it can be 2-out-of-3 pieces. It is statistically impossible to guess what the original secret is without having at least 2 pieces in a 2-out-of-3 SSS scheme. Shamir Secret Sharing is also resistant to attack against quantum computers. Which is awesome!

Its just that it is hard to find a cold hardware wallet that supports Shamir Secret Sharing. Trezor is the only one that does. Unfortunately, that’s the case--Shamir Secret Sharing is the backup method most resistant to theft, loss, and collusion (people entrusted with a Shamir share betray you).

How to Safely Pass On Your Crypto Assets to Your Inheritors With Shamir Secret Sharing

If you are concerned about passing on your cryptocurrency assets after your death--Shamir Secret Sharing is the most reliable way to do it--and I would encourage you to invest in Trezor’s Safe 7) wallet for that reason.

Do this: purchase two Trezor. Yes that’s $200 USD but its worth it for what I am about to tell you. Next go to your Trezor wallet and setup 2-out-of-3 Shamir Secret Sharing. Store two pieces--one each in one metal share. The third and final Shamir Secret Sharing piece should be stored in an offline password manager such as KeePassXC.

The one and only piece in your password manager is safe from everyone--including your family and friends who will most likely steal it if given the chance (be careful of your in-laws [No seriously be careful!]).

Once you die the Shamir secret in your password manager is inaccessible to everyone--safe from everyone though. This is where the next two physical shards from Trezor are important.

Entrust one physical piece with you and your family--such as in your family home. Place it in a safe place--the same safe place you place your family’s goverment-issued Identification documents.

A thief would have to be brave enough to threaten your family at gun point for both your Shamir secret and the one in your house. Either way law enforcement would have just reason to pursue the criminal. Today it is hard to get away with theft of cryptocurrency. Firms such as Chainalysis and Elliptic exist to help law enforcement catch criminals--and they have in the past.

Still, you should not just store two physical Trezor shards in your family’s possession--or they can steal your cryptocurrency behind your back!

So the third and final Trezor shard can be entrusted to a bank. Write in your legal will that upon your death the bank is supposed to release the third physical Trezor shard to your family.

This means the government does have access to one physical shard though. The US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment guards one’s family against unreasonable search and seizures--and the US Government will technically have to file a search warrant before they can confiscate such an item from a tax-paying home.

This is the best method I can think of to guard one’s assets even after one’s death to ensure it is safely passed to one’s family as inheritance.

In the Event One Shard is Stolen or Lost

In the event one shard is known or suspected to have been stolen you the user can rotate the Shamir Secret in time to resolve the matter. In such a case one would have to move one’s cryptocurrency assets to a new wallet under a new Master Private Key and regenerate all shards. Still this will nullify the one stolen shard.

If one shard or more shards have been destroyed the user can regenerate a new set of shards with the same Master Private Key.

My Two Top Picks: Trezor Safe 7 for Advanced Users and OneKey for Novices

So in conclusion I would advise newcomers to start with OneKey Classic 1S. It is much more user-friendly than Trezor, has no history of breaches (so the user does not have to work hard to protect themselves), but has weaker security protections.

Trezor Safe 7 is for more experienced users that took the time to study the risks and benefits of blockchain technology and modern cryptography. Such a user should be educated in both computer security principles as well as have had extensive experience with using cryptocurrency with others. Only Trezor offers Shamir Secret Sharing. Still be warned that in 2017 counterfeit devices were a problem.

OneKey Pro is the absolute best cold hardware wallet to protect the privacy of one’s payments--it is the only one that allows one to use Monero, has no history of critical vulnerabilities, and is easy to use. It is the most expensive though. Unlike OneKey Classic 1S the OneKey Pro has proper reproducible builds.

For both of the above wallets I would strongly recommend downloading the desktop app for either whichever you choose. Even bookmark the website pages so you do not fall for phishing scams. Trezor’s website is fully protected under DNSSEC so it will be resistant to a DNS Cache Poisoning Attack. This can direct you to the attacker’s site even if you bookmark the correct domain. OneKey’s website on the other hand is not fully signed under DNSSEC so it does not offer the same protection.

Although this is not a deal breaker it is a cause of concern. Without full protection under DNSSEC visitors to OneKey do not have reliable assurance they are visiting the true server owned by OneKey. It could be an attacker’s behind the scenes without the user knowing in the event of a DNS Cache Poisoning Attack. This is why most banks and cryptocurrency exchange/vendors go through the effort to ensure their website domains are fully protected under DNSSEC: visitors are vulnerable to phishing without it.

I refuse to recommend Ledger since its technology has been hacked and is proprietary.

I refuse to recommend Tangem even though it has no confirmed history of breach since it is too difficult for me to use (I will not use NFC with a specific mobile phone app I demand the freedom to use third-party apps on any platform in case my current top choice wallet gets compromised). Also keep in mind that having to rely on the mobile app makes one susceptible to the same phishing mobile app issue Ledger Live faced in 2020.

Not Your Node Not Your Rules

In the world of blockchain there are three golden rules that govern one’s ownership of their cryptocurrency:

1. Not your key not your coins. This is why I strongly recommend a cold hardware wallet. It is impractical for malware to get to the cold hardware wallet. Also you can backup the key with Shamir Secret Sharing with Trezor.

2. Not your node not your rules. I will discuss the underrated importance of using one’s own full node here.

3. Not your hardware not your data. In legal jurisdictions everywhere the physical location of the hardware determines ownership. Remember that!

I would like to say this: you should be using your own full node on your own local machine whenever possible. Having your own full node guarantees your transaction is not denied by another node that enforces its own rulesets. Earlier in this article I explained all Bitcoin Core Full Nodes follow the same standard set of rules ( and the same logic applies to all other cryptocurrency networks). So how is that possible? Well, most full nodes owned by companies are accessible only if you are a registered user that have signed the terms and services--so they can deny your transaction through your web interface even though their full node follows the standard protocol for payment confirmation!

A company’s full node can even forcibly switch your newcoming transactions onto a new blockchain without your approval! This is called Chain Hijacking.

Another reason you should use a full node is to protect you from fraudulence. As a merchant you should be using your very own full node in your physical possession to guard you against fraudulent transactions. Bitcoin.org gave an excellent article comparing the benefits of how a full node guards against fraudulent transactions compared to relying on someone else’s.

Just see how well Bitcoin Core guards your privacy compared to any other option:

Also when you use your own full node on your own local machine only you know the information sent to your full node. Your full node will not resend your personal details to third-party nodes (except your IP Address). Here is the chart by Bitcoin.org that displays this:

Again I would like to stress that even your own localhosted full node will pass its IP address to third-party nodes so it is wise to use a privacy-respecting VPN such as Mullvad as I do when you do.

As these diagrams make clear it is impractical for anyone to figure out which transaction was yours when your own full node is broadcasting literally all transactions performed throughout the world to other full nodes! This is a case of information-theoretic privacy.

It is amazing how much a full node can guard you against a cheating customer as well as protect your privacy. Local hosted full nodes do not get the recognition they deserve.

The only attack a full node cannot defend against is the chain rewrite attack (51% Attack). To combat this blockchains do multiple confirmations of blocks to make it harder for such attackers to reverse transactions.

Coins Worth Owning

There are only three coins I truly care about:

1. Bitcoin: So much excellent documentation has been written on Bitcoin’s technology that that reason alone is worth taking the time to learn and use Bitcoin. Once a cryptocurrency newcomer has experience with Bitcoin it is much easier to learn how to use the others. If you are new to cryptography I strongly encourage you to read “Serious Cryptography” by Jeanne Phillipe Aumasson. I would also recommend ”Understanding Cryptography” Second Edition by Paar and Pelzl. These books will equip you to understand the technology Bitcoin was built on (which were US Federal Government approved cryptosystems). This is a prerequisite to make educated decisions for yourself on how blockchain technology will help you in your privacy needs.

2. Monero: The only cryptocurrency that truly kept its promise in guaranteeing private payments. Earlier I mentioned Professor Shoshana Zuboff in her work
”The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” argued our online consumer activity can easily be traced when we conduct fiat payments. Monero is the first digital currency that is so far untraceable. Unfortunately, this also makes it harder for criminals to be caught. Not that this means Monero should be banned--such criminals would misuse other cryptocurrencies and, more so, physical cash anyway. You can simply withdraw your Monero from Kraken to your own wallet. Be warned OneKey Classic 1S does not support Monero. Only OneKey Pro does.

Not only this but OneKey Pro offers fully reproducible builds.

There are no reports of major hacks against OneKey Pro, offers full reproducible builds, and its UI is great. Its just the most expensive.

For this reason OneKey Pro is the best cold hardware wallet for protecting one’s privacy:

3. Ethereum: The real reason why I am interested in Ethereum is to use stablecoins. The one and only stablecoin I like is DAI. This stablecoin is partially backed by cryptocurrency and partially by fiat--balancing stability of fiat with the government-resistant monetary value that cryptocurrency offers. Stablecoins matter when you are using cryptocurrency in business matters--where you cannot afford a massive drop in price destroying your liquidity or solvency. When conducting business-to-business transactions best you use a stablecoin like DAI!

Cryptocurrency: Its Wins and Fails

Success: Censorship-Resistant

The creator(s) of Bitcoin believed Bitcoin would be censorship-resistant by making Bitcoin a decentralized, peer-to-peer network. This is mostly true. Governments continue to struggle to enforce legal bans of cryptocurrency since it is a decentralized network. Bitcoin can even be bought in decentralized, peer-to-peer exchanges such as Haveno. Still, it is unfortunately much easier to spy on the consumer behavior of Bitcoin payments than the Bitcoin creators anticipated—who claimed participants can be anonymous in the Bitcoin whitepaper.

Failure: Anonymity and Privacy

The only cryptocurrency where it is possible to be private and anonymous is Monero and no other. At the time of this writing the US Federal Government, which owns the most powerful cryptographic code-cracking team on planet Earth, still cannot break Monero’s privacy model.

In the real world most people buy their cryptocurrencies from exchanges that demand users to upload their government-issued identification—which ruins the anonymity and privacy of not only the purchaser and even making it difficult for recipients to protect their privacy and anonymity since coin payment histories are traceable going back to the point in time the coin was minted. Micheal Bazzell, a respected consultant for victims of privacy abuse, has insisted the only universal way to ensure anonymity when using cryptocurrency is by accepting cryptocurrency as a source of payment and then spending the coins from one-time addresses. Convincing people to send you cryptocurrency is not easy as that requires business skills.

Success: Use As A Currency

Bitcoin is increasingly succeeding in its mission to be used as a currency. In a 2025 BitPay reports at least 16% of US citizens have used cryptocurrency—where the most common cryptocurrency used is Bitcoin.

The following is a chart of what age group has used cryptocurrency at what frequency from BitPay’s report:

Still, lack of awareness is a huge barrier to entry:

Failure: Decentralization of Mining

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that defend against 51% Attacks force miners to solve computationally-expensive puzzles (a concept called proof-of-work). The Bitcoin inventors intended the Nakamoto Consensus puzzle to be such that the person who succeeded in solving the puzzle would be random.

In the real world this is not the case.

Today Bitcoin miners team up and spread the profits from Bitcoin mining: a system called pool mining.

Here is chart of the centralization of mining for Bitcoin:

Here is the centralization of mining for Monero:

The situation for Monero is even worse. The top two mining pools for Monero own 59.56% of the global hash rate.

That means if both of the mining pools team up they will possess nearly 2/3rds of the global hash rate. In that case the administrators from both mining pools that have colluded can decide who gets rewarded for minted coins and who does not—effectively becoming the new centralized authority on who gets paid first. Centralization of mining is still an unsolved problem and this is exactly why I don’t recommend storing your entire life-savings in cryptocurrency

Failure: Lack of Insurance

This is cryptocurrency’s worst flaw. In a world that treats cryptocurrency as digital precious metals people have an incentive to store it as an investment—not as a means to hold their life savings. The Gold Standard led to the Great Depression. Since there is no insurance for cryptocurrency and people treat it as digital precious metal there is no reason to disbelieve people will hoard it in desperation in the event of an exchange crash. When cryptocurrency exchanges crash the price of cryptocurrency falls.

The FDIC was invented to gurantee people’s bank balances were protected by the US Federal Government should a bank panic happen. In the world of cryptocurrency the equivalent is an exchange collapse—but there is no insurance against price loss for cryptocurrency! So don’t store your whole net worth as a cryptocurrency—even if you store it as a stablecoin where the price of a stablecoin is pegged to the value of $1 USD!

Conclusion

It is my hope this article serves privacy-conscious readers well should they choose to use cryptocurrencies like Monero to conduct private payments. If you enjoyed this article please let me know your thoughts in the comments. Take care!

Cybersecurity professionals should be aware of what motivates people, businesses, and nation-states to invest in technology to manage our lives. Without this knowledge, a cybersecurity professional will not understand how people’s motivations to use technology affect how cybersecurity issues are addressed.

Throughout this blog series, I will first explain why countries like the United States invest in technology. I will next explain how people’s motivations to invest in technology have led to an ever-increasing investment in cybersecurity.

As early as the late nineteenth century, the US Federal Government sponsored the development of computer machines to help the government manage itself. By the 1880s, the US population rose so rapidly that the US Government hosted a competition to develop a machine to help the US perform the 1890 Census. An important question is what cause this sharp rise in population. There were a number of reasons for this: both political and economic.

America Opens to Immigrants: A Policy

After the Alien and Sedition Acts expired with the beginning of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, America welcomed European immigrants.1

Most European immigrants fled their home countries—tired of lack of economic opportunity in their homeland. By 1800 CE, most European countries adopted feudal systems where wealth was distributed based on inheritance, religious affiliation, or royal ancestry.2

America’s founders were frustrated by unequal wealth distribution seen in European countries and believed a person should be rewarded based on merit and not one’s hereditary, religious, nor even royal authority—hoping it would grow the US population, help pay US debts, and satisfy worker demands.3

Thomas Jefferson argued the importance of allowing immigrants arriving to the US. James Madison argued the importance of ensuring no one had absolute authority over them—insisting noncitizens still had certain rights protected by the US Constitution (Madison was one of the authors of the US Constitution). Still, to prevent foreign interests from conflicting with US interests the Naturalization Law of 1802 extended citizenship to all white citizens “of good moral character” as long as they lived in the US for more than five years and declared their desire to be naturalized at least 3 years before doing so.4

Because of the efforts of US Founders the US became a common destination for immigrants. Many of these were religious and political minorities in Eurasia.

With the passing of the Naturalization Law of 1802 America became open to immigration. Beginning from 1830 European immigrants arrived often to escape poverty and for their own safety from violent European political revolutions.5

President Abraham Lincoln further improved immigration to the US by signing two bills: The Homestead Act of 1862 and The Contract Labor Act of 1864. The Homestead Act of 1862 offered land grants to both US citizens and immigrants that were eligible for naturalization. The Contract Labor Act allowed employers to hire foreign workers, pay their transportation costs, and contract their labor. Corrupt rulers, high taxes, and a lack of land all drove German emigrants to migrate to America. German emigrants to the US wrote about their positive experiences in America. One of the most important works—Report on a Journey to the Western States of North America and a Stay of Several Years Along the Missouri (During the Years 1824–1827)—convinced Germans to migrate to US states such as Missouri 67

Lincoln also helped Chinese citizens emigrate to the US by appointing Anson Burlingame as the US Minister of China in 1861. Burlingame convinced the Chinese Government to allow Chinese citizens to emigrate to the US under the Burlingame-Seward Treaty.8 This was a great benefit to Chinese citizens since it was previously illegal in China. Although the treaty did not guarantee a Chinese-American immigrant the right to naturalization—millions of Chinese emigrated in response—boosting the US population by 14.4% as the Founders of America wanted.9 It took until 1898 for the federal government to allow Chinese immigrants to have birthright citizenship after the United States vs Wong Kim Ark trial.10

By 1890 the foreign-born US population was 14.8%. Many migrants decided to work for a period of time before returning to their home country.11

As we can see in the chart below the US population rose more rapidly than any other nation from 1800 - 1900 CE12:

Still, immigration alone cannot explain the standardization of computer technology in the US. It took place in the US but South American countries lagged. To understand why I would like to cite important insights offered by Acemoglu and Robinson in their book “Why Nations Fail” and “Capital” by Thomas Piketty.

Technical Innovation Amongst Countries

I have given evidence that immigration rose rapidly in the United States in search of better standards of living.1314 Immigrants rushed to the US since employers offered better wages than what immigrants would receive at their birthplace.15

There were several important events in the nineteenth century that compelled the US Federal Government to adopt computer technology by the end of the 19th century16:

1. The US Constitution recognized the importance of private property rights. The US Homestead Act that President Abraham Lincoln signed encouraged immigrants to settle to the United States to claim ownership of fresh land as private property. Moreso however American born on US soil spread to lands in the Midwest and West. The US Homestead Act did not require citizenship to claim land—and US railroad companies advertised the sale of land grants in Europe to attract settlers. The US Federal Government and railroad companies reasoned this would attract immigrants to the US—who would work on the newly settled land and allow railroad companies to transport valuable goods for sale. This led to the rapid rise of the US population—mostly from immigration. This improved farming efficiency in the US. It took less farmers to produce more agricultural surplus. Now that there was more food available and less need for labor people could spend time doing extra beneficical tasks that an agragarian lifestyle would not have given them. This is why businesses profited from technological innovation in the US—especially in the North. The North would later win the US Civil War and require the South to adopt some of their customs afterwards—including access to public education and increased civil rights for people of all races.1718

2. An accessible US Patent System—which granted affordable patents to an inventor regardless of their background—even to non-US citizens. In 2012 intellectual capital makes up 55% of US GDP. Intellectual capital makes up to 80% of market value of all public companies in the US.19

   1. Patents grant inventors the exclusive right to profit from their invention for a fixed period of time. After the patent expires anyone is welcome to profit off the invention as they can. This was unique to the US Patent System—it did not discriminate based on one’s social class, wealth, or even citizenship.20

   2. Patents in the US were less expensive than other countries and it thus made business sense for inventors and businessman to found their companies in the United States. The US Patent System was unique in that it allowed anyone regardless of status—even without US citizenship—to file a patent. The selling point of having a patent was the exclusive right to profit off an invention idea. Let’s say you are a person that does not have the resources to build the invention on our own. Such a person can first file a patent and then license the patent invention to another company that would, in turn, build the product and sell it. The inventor receives royalties for inventing the idea—a win-win for both. This concept gave non-wealthy, non-elite citizens a strong incentive to invent technology to benefit American society. Even rich businessman such as Thomas Edison sold patent licenses to others to profit from royalties this way. 2122

      1. Important inventors such as Samuel F.B. Morse (inventor of telegraph), Alexander Graham Bell (founder of AT&T), Cornelius Vanderbilt (improved efficiency of railroads and therefore transportation in the US), Andrew Carnegie (founder of Bethlehem Steel), John D Rockefeller (founder of Standard Oil), Henry Ford (standardized assembly line and made automobile transportation affordable), and Thomas Edison (founder of modern General Electric) all benefited from the accessible US Patent System. All of these inventors except Bell and Morse were not from wealthy families. Alexander Graham Bell was the only immigrant in this list to be awarded a US patent for his invention of the telephone—yet Bell was not a US citizen when he was awarded the patent in 1876! Bell was granted US citizenship much later in 1882.2324 All these inventors increased spread of information (a critical part of protecting freedom of speech and boosting commerce), job options for American citizens, and electronic commerce—the beginning of the Global Information Age.

         1. The Information Age continued in the twentieth century as the US struggled against Russia during the Cold War for military and economic dominance. During this century the US found DARPA under President Dwight D. Eisenhower—the military program that birthed the Internet with the assistance of Stanford University and UCLA to protect the US against potential nuclear threats. The US Government also funded several military contracts in the 20th century that led to the rise of Silicon Valley—a well-funded area for tech companies. Several “Big Tech” companies including Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic were all founded in Silicon Valley—and the US Federal Government either directly or indirectly made all happen through the US Patent System and US Federal Government contracts.2526

      2. The US Patent Act of 1870 allowed non-US citizens to file for US patents.27 All of the factors mentioned above made the United States one of the most attractive places for technical innovation in the world—and it still is to this day. The US Patent System was unique in that it awarded ideas based on merit—not one’s status. No other major country in the world in the nineteenth century was this open to patent grants.

3. US President Abraham Lincoln 28 signed the Morrill Act of 1862. This act required the US Federal Government to grant land to states to build public universities. Several important universities including Cornell University and the University of California system continue to exist because of this critical land grant. These universities train highly skilled workers to work for companies that powered the US economy—a fact that remains true to this day.29

4. Unlike other countries US banks could not simply buy their way to power. The US Federal Government system was designed to only allow people to stay in office after each election for very short periods of time—including the US President. Frequent elections prevented banks from sponsoring politicians that would grant them monopoly banking power—as such politicians would often be rejected from office after doing so the first time (Andrew Jackson is a notable exception—who adopted the spoils system)30 Without the existence of serious banking monopolies in the nineteenth century there were tens of thousands of banks scattered throughout the US forced to charge low interest rates for loans due to fierce, nearby competition. This made it easier for businesses to risk taking loans to start a business—arguably easier than in any other nation.31

5. The United States is unique in its endorsement in allowing freedom of speech—even allowing public speech deemed morally offensive—including speech promoting racial or ethnic superiority to control others (unless it involves violence or false alarm). There were cases where this was undermined such as during the US Civil War (muting speech in favor of slavery) and World War II (muting antisemitism to promote US propaganda in favor of supporting Allied Powers). Still, moreso than not the US protects even “hateful” and offensive” speech in public. No other nation in the United States allows freedom of speech to such a degree in their modern Constitutions. Freedom of the press promoted economic growth and resisted monopolies. For example telegraph companies including Western Union used to set unreasonably high prices for sending data through their telegraph service. Public dissatisfaction with these prices as seen in the press led to the passing of acts such as The Communications Act of 1934—granting the Federal Communications Commission the power to regulate pricing of telecommunications. A second case study is the collective criticism of monopolies in the Progressive Era by critical journalists (coined “muckrackers”) during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency.32 The muckrackers convinced the US Federal Government to pass bills such as The Sherman Antitrust Act to break up monopolies that have proven to stifle economic growth through ruthless deletion of competition.33

The five above key reasons support the thesis of “Why Nations Fail”: the design and practice of political institutions determine the success of economic institutions in a nation. No other nation other than the US optimized the recognition of innovative ideas based on merit—not prejudice. The design and execution of US Federal and State Governments allowed this to take place.

By the late 1880s the political situation in the US not only caused a sharp rise in the population. It also led to the sharpest rise in social mobility and complexity as technical innovation and the federal funding of US public colleges allowed for narrow specializations of labor.3435 By the 1880s the combined problem of accounting for a rapidly rising, diverse population and increasingly complex jobs from tech innovation compelled the US to host a national competition to build a US Census Machine.3637 The winner of this national competition was Herman Hollerith—who would co-found International Business of Machines (IBM) with Thomas J Watson.3839

IBM Began the Global Computing Revolution

Hollerith’s machine was so successful in helping complete the US Census that other nations in Eurasia adopted his technology to help complete theirs.40 Hollerith’s machine set the standard of using Gottfried Leibnitz’s binary numeral system to perform calculations. To this day all computer machines around the world execute code using the binary numeral system.41

Hollerith’s punched-card system to write programs was inspired by the punch-card system used by railroad conductors to record traveler details. IBM improved Hollerith’s technology. Aside from the US Census the US Federal Government used IBM punched-card machines in Social Security Administration.42. Businesses around the world quickly struck business deals with IBM or were inspired by IBM’s “Tabulating Machine Technology” to save money and time with tedious tasks—from helping police manage criminal records to helping libraries keep track of borrowed books.43

Indeed the US Government Accounting Office (G.A.O) attests it would be impractical for the US Federal Government to serve the rapidly rising US population—which skyrocketed from about 80 million in 1900 CE to over 280 million by 1980 CE.44 Without computing technology the US Federal Government would have fallen short of its federal duties—and the US G.A.O points out Presidential actions such as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Harry S. Truman’s approval of the US Atomic Energy programs greatly expanded the US Federal Government’s civic duties in the 20th century—making completing tasks and record-keeping ever-more complicated against an ever-expanding population.45

In the next article I will explain how the US persisted its leadership in technical innovation in the twentieth century during the US Cold War despite major changes in society—including the rise in costs and complexities of Patent and Copyright Laws to the development of Silicon Valley and Big Techs.

One day in a class on Genetic Engineering at UCLA my professor asked us to write the following down: the reason college education gets more expensive the bureaucracy gets bigger and bigger. Professor Jiang Xueqin, a Youtuber, that went to Yale—complained about the misplaced prestige these universities get—and how unjustly expensive they are.

As it turns out colleges are little better than greedy companies—they charge high prices for tuition and invest it in everything else besides improving the student’s critical thinking skills. Even in Jefferson’s time the University of Virginia over-invested in building fancy buildings (even though Jefferson knew students would suffer in the intense heat from the material) and lavish meals—believing that would convince students to come to the university.1 This is what we still see today—elite universities continue to improve the university’s appearance at the price of raising the student’s tuition. If you are reading this you probably despised the college experience—overcrowded schools with disinterested professors and the stunning price tag of close to $100,000 for the entire tuition.

Throughout US History there has been a struggle to provide education that gives an equal and fair opportunity to everyone. I will now narrate the history of the rise of US public education and its sharp decline beginning in 1981.

Again, during Jefferson’s lifetime the situation was no different—at one point the tuition for University of Virginia became so high only the wealthiest of the elite bothered attending. Meanwhile other bright kids attended university in other states.2

Before 1837 most schools were run locally—addressing the needs of the community. Starting with Horace Mann this began to change. Governments and businesses designed public school systems throughout the US to have several qualities3:

1. Train workers for corporations. Leading corporations including Ford Motors, Standard Oil, and Carnegie Steel Company funded schools so they can hire workers later. This did boost the economy—however it did emerge a culture of uniformity and obedience in children. This is what every hiring manager wants: workers that can read manuals, perform simple calculations, and follow directions. The grading system, modeled after the Prussian school system, is designed to distinguish people that are best at this. Just as the original Prussian education system was designed to make obedient citizens to the Prussian military government—so did corporations want obedient workers.

2. Horace Mann wanted schools to filled with students from different cultures, religions, and customs. This would teach young students to respect everyone equally regardless of their background. This was arguably the best aspect of the standardized public school system—whose effect is still enjoyed to this day.

3. However Mann was still biased towards Protestant values—believing that instiling a Protestant work ethic was best to promote the nation’s growth.

The downsides, as the article I cited points out, are known to every student:

1. There is little room for personalized learning.

2. They do not allow for a flourishing exchange of ideas or innovations

3. Although both cause people to not be innovators they give what corporations want: workers that produce reliable, reproducible results.

Mann’s reforms alone did not fully solve the issue of allowing access to public education. Prior to 1862 higher education was inaccessible to the rural and working class. College already was very expensive by Jefferson’s time in the first place!

US President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act. This important act allowed US states to use royalties they received from the US Federal Government to fund the development of universities specializing in the applied sciences. It was through this act that crucial universities were formed including, but not limited to, Massachusetts Institue of Technology, Cornell University, and Brown University. Later this act was improved in the Morill Act of 1890 to require states to fund the development of universities for African Americans. Researchers including Isaac Ehrlich, Adam Cook, and Yong Yin conclude the Morill Act played a crucial role in the United States’s development as an economic superpower.4

The Morill Acts certainly did. And they were not the only cases where the US Federal Government invested in public education that made this happen.

The next major event to improve public education in the US was US Reconstruction after the US Civil War. Before the US Civil War the only Southern children to receive an education were the ones who could pay for it. Reconstruction required Southern states to fund for US public education although this was initially only allowed in the South to whites. For the first time under federal law people that used to not have access to education—African Americans, the poor, the disabled—were allowed to have an education.5

However white Southerners made intense efforts to resist allowing African Americans within the Jim Crow era. Organizations such as the NAACP worked for decades to make the case that segregated schools were hurtful to education—an argument that won in US Brown vs Board of Education. Even after Brown vs Board of Education only 2.3% of the nearly 3-million former Confederate States attended racially integrated schools. It took US Court Case Green v. County School Board of New Kent County to ensure African Americans could safely enroll in public schools. By 1970 90% of African American children in the South attended integrated schools. Unfortunately this would only last a decade thanks to Supreme Court.

There were two more legal bills that boosted US public education. The GI Bill of Rights was passed in 1944 to help US WWII veterans readjust to civilian life—including funds for education, government-backed loans, unemployment benefits, and help with finding jobs. The GI Bill made higher education accessible to veterans—allowing the rapid expansion of colleges and universities. The GI Bill helped veterans emerge from a potential life of poverty into the middle class.

US public education reached its peak when US President Lyndon B Johnson passed the Higher Education Act of 1965—offering federal grants (e.g. The Pell Grant) and low-interest loans to college students, gave federal funding to US colleges, and founded the National Teachers Corps. Lyndon B Johnson stressed the importance of such actions to provide opportunities for low-income and middle-income families, supporting struggling colleges, and improving access to literature at higher education institutions. In 2015 the National Education Association praised the program for making a college education affordable to low and middle-income Americans.6

Unfortunately, as early as 1967 US public education began to decline. Then Governor of California Ronald Reagan argued integration in public schools was just as bad as segregated schools. Reagan7. Ronald Reagan campaigned to end free tuition for colleges, reduced funding for the construction of state campuses, fired Clark Kerr—the respected President of the University of California, and declared that US states are not responsible for “subsidizing intellectual curiousity”. Reagan denied additional funding even for basic education.8

US school students still suffer from the downsides of these budget cuts to this day. Students suffer from overcrowded classrooms (this hits hard to college students) that lack individual attention. Outdated textbooks. Worn-out buildings. Tired teachers. Half of LAUSD students in 1970 went on strike from lack of funding. Reagan continued cutting funds for US public education as President. Reagan cut federal funds from local school districts throughout the US and transferred them to state governments. It is clear Ronald Reagan has helped made US public educaiton significantly worse than what it was when he began his presidency. He succeeded for the same reason Jefferson failed: wealthy businessmen found no reason to support the well-being of others through public education. Thankfully, Reagan’s attempts to get rid of the US Department of Education and to reduce bilingual education failed. Still, by the end of Reagan’s presidency US Federal Budgets for education was down to 6%.9

The US professor I cited for sources 8 and 9 (the same source) is an Emeritus Professor of Education at La Salle University since 1969 CE—so he lived to see the effects of Reagan’s budget cuts first-hand in both California as Governor and once again as President.

US college education continues to grow more expensive and worse as we speak. It is my fear we will once again return to the earlier days of American education where the only wealthy families can afford education—barring the middle class and poor from receiving it. Once education becomes the sole intellectual property of the rich people will leave the United States and look for economic opportunities elsewhere as young students left Virginia to seek affordable education elsewhere.

In my last blog article I explained education in America is in decline as prices rise and its helpfulness today questioned.

I explained Thomas Jefferson believed “Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind”. Jefferson insisted people be educated not just for the economy but also to ensure they were an effective checks and balances against government.

Thomas Jefferson spent many years of his life persuading the Virginia legislature to pass the bill for universal education for all white citizens—rich or poor ; men or women (unfortunately Jefferson did not believe in educational rights for African Americans).

Jefferson’s attempts failed despite help from good friends like James Madison. The wealthy amongst the Virginia legislature did not feel it should be their burden to pay for another’s education in need. This pained Thomas Jefferson bitterly. Jefferson truly believed education was not just about prosperity but also about ensuring people were responsible with it—and that includes distinguishing if rulers were responsible with their power. And Jefferson believed a lack of access to universal education would be a huge hindrance to that.

Jefferson based his educational ideals from the mistakes other nations made from his time. Jefferson visited France in his lifetime and was aware of the civil struggles that led to the French Revolution. The wealth inequality gap between the rich and the poor was atrocious. In France, unlike the US, universities served the rich and the church only. Both of these institutions suppressed Enlightment ideals—such as those of John Locke that threatened the control the church and monarchy’s control.

From the case of France we learn education can be misused to oppress and control

people when used for the wrong reason.

Britain, Spain, and the Ottoman Empires were just one of several other governments / religious institutions that used education to stay in power. All of these national governments faced rebellions for their oppression and ultimately lost power.

Jefferson’s personal battles with Britain in the United States and the civil tension he personally saw in France inspired him to invest in education: co-founding the University of Virginia and several failed attempts to convince the Virginia legislature to pass free education.

There are a bunch of sad lessons to be learnt from Jefferson’s failed—sometimes even hypocritical—attempts to “improve” education in Virginia.

After Jefferson proposed “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge” The white, wealthy of the Virginia population did not believe it was worth paying taxes to support the poor.

I will give case studies here to remind readers why tragedies like this happen throughout world history.

1. Even Thomas Jefferson contradicted his own ideals. He founded the University of Virginia targeting the sons of wealthy landowners, lawyers, and merchants. The University of Virginia was maintained by slaves. Worse still—the slaves were often harassed, bullied, and in extreme cases dissected after death.1

2. Like other slaveowners Jefferson wanted to keep their slaves illiterate to avoid spreading ideas of legally required freedom for slaves—a concept called abolition. Slavemasters hoped restricting access to education would prevent slaves from launching successful rebellions. Sadly this strategy worked—with the Haitian Slave Rebellion being the only successful slave rebellion in history.2

3. The citizens of Virginia were also unwilling to help poor people receive an education. Several political figures including Thomas Jefferson and John Tyler Sr failed despite their best efforts. The citizens of Virginia believed they could have a republic without paying for the next generation’s education.3 A fate that is taking place today in America through skyrocketing tuition costs. A fate that is taking place today in America through skyrocketing tuition costs. Most Virginians quit education only after a few years of schooling to work at farms or shops. 4 Saddened, Jefferson said “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness”5

It is ironic that Jefferson’s own people wanted democracy yet were unwilling to invest to protect it—favoring wealth attainment over protecting everyone’s rights—a common cause of downfall in history. In his work “The Republic” Plato warns the downfall of society begins when people lose power to the wealthy and those of high status—yet take no civic action to disengage this. Gradually the society depraves to an oligarchy—where only the rich rule silently as monarchs. Left unchecked a desperate people powerless in debt before the wealthy allows a tyrant to assume emergency powers—forgiving debts—and quietly executing anyone that stands in his way—assuming rule as an authoritarian.6

In Taylor’s work we read that the South falls to an oligarchy controlled by landowners enslaving a people for their own gain. To this day wealth inequality and racism remain a problem in the South. At this time US President Trump holds more popularity in Southern states than in the Northern states. The parallel to Plato’s “tyrant” and Trump is striking. In the past Trump has managed to convince supporters to riot at the State Capitol and a second time with the Iranian War—which the US Military has promised will bring the Second Coming of Jesus.78

My main point in narrating this to you is that the downfall of society begins when value wealth, honor, and status over ethics. Nations including Ancient Greece and Rome—which the United States is modeled after—have fallen for this reason—even though they predicted it! Entire nation’s economies in World War II collapsed thanks to this greed—having to rebuild their economies from scratch. The good news is that these European nations—especially Germany—have thankfully learned their lesson. By now nations in the European Union feature accessible public education that instruct both civic and economic education to prevent the horrors that took place in the war. Judging by the war, increasing wealth gap, and increased executive powers Trump is gaining—the US is headed towards the same economic collapse and the rise of tyranny.

If the wealth gap keeps getting worse unchecked, if colleges become too expensive just as education became too expensive to afford in the South, if we do not teach our youth who we should trust our lives with as leaders in civic education—we are destined to suffer the fate of the nations that collapsed in World War II.

The current situation in the US was not, on average, as bad as it is today. US public education reached its peak by the late 20th century. However starting from Ronald Reagan’s Administration this went on decline. In the next blog post I will explain how the US went from lacking public education, to education for all, and finally to the current situation where it is destined to be affordable only to the wealthy.