Your Privacy Practice Saves Lives

Privacy matters. Privacy is the only thing keeping you and your loved ones from the hands of terrorists cosplaying as militia at the request of the most ignorant and dangerous politicians this government has ever allowed to reign over this land.

As a privacy advocate, I’ve been screaming into the void for almost a decade about why privacy matters.

Why you shouldn’t give your phone number to the retail coffeeshop to get a free coffee once a month.

Why you shouldn’t connect your phone to that coffeeshop’s public wifi without layers of protection in place.

Why you shouldn’t put free gaming apps on your phone and give it access to your contact list.

Why you shouldn’t keep ANY billionaire-owned algorithm on your mobile device and give it access to your contact list.

Why you shouldn’t use Gmail, Outlook, Docs, Sheets or any unencrypted platform to store sensitive information about you, your work or your loved ones.

Why you shouldn’t have Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Twitter on your mobile device connected to your contact list and photos.

We often hear the analogy of Anne Frank and how we now know who would have protected and hidden the Frank family during Nazi Germany and who would have turned the family over to the fascists. But what we don’t realize is that if we’ve done any of the above things with our technology and completely disregarded our privacy measures, we are essentially waving a giant flag that says, “the Frank family is right here, come get them.”

Not hyperbole or alarmist conspiracy-- this is LITERALLY our reality right now. I totally get and have empathy for the fact that most people are just ignoring the news and bypassing reality right now. Gotta protect that mental health, understood. But, at what cost?

Bypassing reality right now puts everyone you love -- and EVERY CONTACT IN YOUR PHONE OR ON YOUR COMPUTER at high risk.

The government issued NSPM-7 several weeks ago. It’s a National Security Presidential Memorandum, and unlike an EO, it carries the weight of the National Security apparatus for enforcement. In this directive, it stated that anyone who holds anti-christian, anti-family, anti-capitalist and anti-government views can be detained and imprisoned under the threat of terrorism. That’s essentially ALL of us, in one form or another. That most likely encompasses 80% of your phone contacts if you’re reading this essay, or if you can read.

And the modern version of “detainment” could mean a detention center in the swamps of Florida, a labor camp in rural California, a hyper-violent prison in El Salvador or just a one-way flight to Uganda. This could also mean the canceling of passports, seizure of people’s bank accounts or assets, social security income or any other plethora of mechanisms that government can now utilize to control us.

Now, I want you to open your phone and look at any and all of the apps that are owned by anyone who was sitting behind the president during the inauguration or recently appeared at the White House kissing the ring of power. Hell, if you’re on an iPhone, you don’t even need to open the device.

Now, I want you to scroll through your phone contacts and your photos and look at every single person who may fall into the following bucket:

• Voted for a democrat in the last 2 decades
• Goes to a yoga studio
• Reads books on Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, or any other “non-christian” religion
• Likes and wears rainbows
• Believes in DEI, equality or climate science
• Lives in a blue state or city
• Has slightly brownish skin
• Speaks a foreign language
• Has an opinion other than M@GA about the government.
• Has friends or family who go to protests, engage in direct action or is an open activist
• Anyone who donates money to a nonprofit
• Anyone who volunteers at a nonprofit, food bank or organization that supports marginalized demographics
• Is part of the LGBTQ community or is an open alley
• Goes to the public library on a regular basis and checks out books that would place them in any of those buckets
• Watches South Park, Colbert, The Daily Show, Kimmel or any other comedian who is not M@ga and does so on a device of any kind, cable or a smart TV.
• Holds a degree in anything that falls under an umbrella of humanities, politics, religion, diversity, climate change, science, linguistics, etc.
• Anyone who has ever expressed an opinion or LIKED an opinion on any social platform in the last decade that runs counter to those in power.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Now, I want you to think of that person in your mind. Your neighbor, your child, your cousin, your partner, your parent, your sibling, your bestie, your favorite professor -- anyone you care about or just think is a good human. Hold them in your mind’s eye and feel the energy of that person and why you care for them.

Now, I want you to sit with the reality that if you have zero regard for your digital privacy and openly ignore all practical and simple measures to protect your digital privacy and engage with algorithms and devices in the ways I described above, YOU could be responsible for the government deeming that person you love as a terrorist AND exposing their location to Meal Team Six through your disregard for digital privacy.

This is a conversation we should be openly having with our communities and the people we care about. And if you are a community organizer of ANY vulnerable population or run a non-profit and you are communicating with the people you serve and are trying to protect using WhatsApp, Gmail, Insta or a platform owned by a male in Silicon Valley, you are literally exposing those people to the very, VERY high probability that they will be easily scooped up by the government.

LET ME REPEAT THAT...

If you are an activist, an organizer OR just run a non-profit AND you are not using encrypted communications -- you will likely be responsible for people in your community being imprisoned or killed when this government fully weaponizes our social networking and communications.

You have maybe-- MAYBE-- 6 months to fix this, if that’s even possible. If not, you will be exposing all of the people you work so hard to protect and serve to one of the most violent regimes in modern history.

So, what can you do?

Direct Action Today

• Go to Proton and set up an email account, it’s free. Use ONLY that email from now on. (keep the gmail for junk, but don’t type anything into it and hit send)
• If you fall in any of the buckets above OR YOUR FRIENDS/LOVED ONES DO, pay the $4-12 a month and get the email, VPN, Drive and Docs for Proton. STOP USING GMAIL. PERIOD.
• REMOVE all free gaming, coupon, weather, etc apps on your mobile devices -- NOW.
• Remove ALL social media apps from your mobile device UNLESS they are decentralized AND you’ve already locked down your device.
• Keep your mobile devices, computers and browsers updated— always.
• If you have a loved one involved in direct action in any way, remove their full contact information (physical address) from your phone. Use pen and paper and just tuck it away somewhere safe. Change their names to a nickname.
• Turn OFF wifi when you leave the house. Use a farday bag if you’re an activist or have a large network of them.
• Install a VPN on your phone and all devices you use at home to connect to the internet and use the VPN at home on your computers.
• NEVER connect to public wifi without your VPN on.
• Have a conversation with your loved ones about the risks and plan for what happens when the full surveillance apparatus is working (my uneducated and generous guess is you have maybe 6 months) and what your risk level is. They need to know.
• Have a plan if you have dependents-- kids or dogs-- if you somehow end up on the blacklist and get scooped up.

If you think I’m being an alarmist, just open up any social app (after you turn on your VPN) and search “Chicago !CE” and watch a few clips from protestors. That’s coming for most US cities once they lock in the game plan that they’re testing in Blue Cities. Again, this is not alarmist, they literally said that to the Generals of our military in Quantico 2 weeks ago. On camera. By design.

Again, I know this seems far-fetched and unreal. And if you haven’t been paying attention to any of this, it will definitely seem extreme, but this is literally where we are right now.

We’re at the part in history where the Frank family was looking to their neighbors for a safe place to hide. The major difference now is that we are all intertwined with our digital lives, and that networking which keeps us all connected and able to enjoy our loved ones who don’t live down the road anymore is the very thing being weaponized against us.

All of this said, and I’m fully aware this article puts me at risk but I’ve made peace with that reality as a writer and privacy advocate, our judicial system is still holding by a thread and there are black swan events that could prevent the worst case scenario that is very clearly looming on the horizon. A part of me believes we may squeak through this, in some way we can make peace with as a better tomorrow.

But I am also a logical pragmatist and I’ve been watching the full arc of this political agenda since my time studying poli sci and journalism at Chapel Hill under the Bush/Cheney years. I’ve traveled to authoritarian regimes and documented under those brutal governments. I know what happens to dissidents, I’ve documented some of the worst treatments to pacifists and revolutionaries. Their stories will rip your heart out.

I hold the hope that we’ll still, somehow, avoid being the ones sharing our stories of torture and brutality at the hands of our government. And for a rapidly growing number of our neighbors, the stories of torture and cruelty have already occurred or are happening right now. But we are very close to the point of no return. And the more we protect ourselves and the ones we love-- with BASIC privacy measures-- the more likely we are to have the peaceful solution so many of us are craving now.

Please share this essay with the ones who need to hear this most. And if you’re curious of where to start, check out the links below.

EFF.Org | Surveillance Self Defense

Street Level Surveillance

IntelTechniques by Michael Bazzel

My Digital Privacy & Protection Workshop

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