How to celebrate Independence Day

There are of course a num­ber of ways in which Amer­i­cans tra­di­tion­al­ly spend the anniver­sary of the sign­ing of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, many of which have noth­ing to do with the sig­nif­i­cance of the found­ing of this nation, or for which the sig­nif­i­cance has been for­got­ten along the way.

Now, a day off is a day off, and I don’t want to be the one to spoil any­one’s bar­be­cue. You can’t real­ly go wrong in my book by spend­ing the day with friends and/or fam­i­ly enjoy­ing one anoth­er’s com­pa­ny and some tasty gril­l­ables and bev­er­ages. I would­n’t want to get in the way of that.

How­ev­er, in addi­tion per­haps it would be good to spend a lit­tle time con­sid­er­ing the free­doms and priv­iliges of liv­ing in the Unit­ed States. Many of them seem to be going away for a vari­ety of rea­sons, and keep­ing them in mind may be the best way to notice when you read about some­thing that under­mines our rights.

• Read the U S Con­sti­tu­tion. It’s a much short­er doc­u­ment than you might think and it won’t take much time. It helps some­times to get con­text for the short­hand used in news reports, like Estab­lish­ment Clause or just the num­ber of one of the Amend­ments. Scott Berkun, an author I admire, set up a pub­lic Face­book event for peo­ple to com­mit to read­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion on Inde­pen­dence Day this year. It’s cer­tain­ly not nec­es­sary to do any­thing that pub­lic, but I appre­ci­ate the encouragement.
• Read a recent Supreme Court deci­sion. OK, these tend to be fair­ly lengthy, but the Jus­tices of the Supreme Court are most­ly real­ly good writ­ers. Espe­cial­ly if there is a recent deci­sion that has made you angry (or pleased) because of the news reports about it, read­ing the deci­sion (and the dis­sent) can be quite informative.
• Write a let­ter to an elect­ed offi­cial. If the point of liv­ing in a demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic is that our opin­ions are heard by our rep­re­sen­ta­tives, it’s impor­tant that our rep­re­sen­ta­tives hear our opin­ions. It does­n’t even have to be a com­plaint. There might be some­thing one of your elect­ed offi­cials did right, and since that is so rare, that’s all the more impor­tant to encourage. 
• Go to the fir­ing range. Yes, this is going to be unpop­u­lar among some peo­ple. I don’t per­son­al­ly own a firearm and I don’t mean to encour­age any­one to go get one. But if you have one and your local range is open and avail­able to you, why not prac­tice your Sec­ond Amend­ment right while prac­tic­ing your aim?
• Start using encryp­tion. In con­trast with firearms where I sug­gest­ed you go to the range only if it’s the sort of thing you already do, I absolute­ly encour­age any­one who isn’t cur­rent­ly using encryp­tion to start doing so right now. It’s very pop­u­lar these days to com­plain about the gov­ern­ment run­ning roughshod over our pri­va­cy, but rel­a­tive­ly few peo­ple are actu­al­ly doing any­thing about it, despite the fact that the tools to do some­thing about it are free and eas­i­ly avail­able. There is a lit­tle bit of a learn­ing curve, but there are a lot of peo­ple who will be hap­py to help and answer ques­tions. Me, for example. 

That final sug­ges­tion is the rea­son this post exists. Using encryp­tion for com­mon com­mu­ni­ca­tion and per­son­al data is the best way to make sure that your pri­va­cy stays pri­vate. You may think you have noth­ing to hide; great. If your infor­ma­tion is encrypt­ed you can always decrypt it when the police ask you to. But it will be your deci­sion and they won’t be able to pre­emp­tive­ly search your files before you get to ask your lawyer whether it’s smart to do so.

The gov­ern­ment and law enforce­ment aren’t the only rea­sons to encrypt your data and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. There are for­eign gov­ern­ments and crim­i­nals col­lect­ing every bit of infor­ma­tion that pass­es through the servers they have gained access to. You don’t have to be doing some­thing wrong in order for unscrupu­lous peo­ple to use your pri­vate infor­ma­tion for bad purposes.

I’ll go a step far­ther to illus­trate this point: if you are doing some­thing wrong, please don’t use encryp­tion. I hope you get caught. Stop it right now. But if you have noth­ing to hide, you’re the ones I want most to get on the encryp­tion band­wag­on. I use encryp­tion whereev­er I can. I con­sid­er it a patri­ot­ic duty to pro­tect not just myself but my loved ones, neigh­bors, and fel­low cit­i­zens by keep­ing my com­mu­ni­ca­tions secure. Crim­i­nals, for­eign gov­ern­ments, and unscrupu­lous peo­ple should­n’t be able to use my infor­ma­tion for their nefar­i­ous pur­pos­es with­out my permission.

Heck, even peo­ple with­out bad intent should have to get my per­mis­sion before hav­ing access to my pri­vate data. Reg­u­lar read­ers of Mono­chro­mat­ic Out­look know that I moved my cal­en­dar and address book off of Google and Apple’s servers recent­ly. I care much less about those com­pa­nies hav­ing my data, because I gave them per­mis­sion and pro­vid­ed that infor­ma­tion. What trou­bled me the whole time I used those cloud ser­vices was that I had giv­en away a bunch of oth­er peo­ple’s per­son­al information.

If a stranger — or even some­one I knew and trust­ed, for that mat­ter — asked me for a friend’s phone num­ber or home address, I would­n’t give it to them with­out per­mis­sion. Of course I’d glad­ly pass the requester’s con­tact infor­ma­tion to the oth­er friend, and I would hap­pi­ly ask my friend if it was alright to give that infor­ma­tion out. But with­out that per­mis­sion, I don’t think it’s my infor­ma­tion to give out.

Email and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the same way. It isn’t just my pri­vate infor­ma­tion I want to keep safe; I don’t want to be respon­si­ble for leak­ing oth­er peo­ple’s pri­vate infor­ma­tion out to peo­ple I don’t even know. Even if I could nev­er be held respon­si­ble for such a breach of data, it’s wrong. It isn’t my deci­sion whether your infor­ma­tion becomes public.

So do it! Install GnuPG and start col­lect­ing the pub­lic keys of your friends. Start using secure instant mes­sag­ing clients like Telegram Mes­sen­ger.¹ Ask the pro­fes­sion­als you do busi­ness with if they have encryp­tion keys for email. If you are already famil­iar with encryp­tion, offer to help a friend who isn’t to get set up.

Then go and enjoy the fire­works, bar­beque, music, beer… what­ev­er it is you nor­mal­ly like to do on a nation­al holiday.

Hap­py Inde­pen­dence Day!