US Mail:
The Original Privacy
Despite being over 250 years old, this communication technology – ink on paper, delivered on foot, remains a uniquely private and secure communications channel.
While digital life is guarded by passwords and “encryption” those locks are transparent to the State and rogue agencies. Your emails, texts, and photos exist in a permanent, searchable cloud that can be intruded upon without you ever knowing.
In my experience of life, freedom and witness are the two sacred pillars.
It’s worth keeping them pure.
When you know you are being watched, it changes your behavior.
It changes not only the physical actions you take, it changes the way you think.
It is quiet creeping mind control.
It is silent, transparent force.
There are many sacred spaces in life- but none are more sacred than the space of your own mind.
It is the place we create from.
Pray from.
Witness from.
Love from.
It is the totality of what it means to be human.
By contrast, this envelope is a sovereign space. By law, it requires a Federal search warrant to open.
Our First and Fourth Amendment rights should not be “legacy features” of a bygone era. They are in shambles, traded for the promise of safety – whether you personally agree to that or not.
May this piece of mail not only entertain, inform and inspire you; may breaking its seal be a sacramental reminder of the sacred human experiences of being, thinking as we wish.
Of speaking our conscience, of expressing ourselves, as we wish.
Of keeping our possessions, our papers, our homes, our lives – as we wish, without fear of intrusion.
Of our sovereignty of mind, word, and place.
Let it be a remembrance of the rights we have lost and what we must take back.
May your actions remain your own, your words travel in secret, and your mind be sovereign territory.
May we always live life on our own terms, and then help others do the same.
– Paul Duane
P.S.
The irony of using a QR code to read this on your phone is not lost on me.
Close this tab, put your phone in the freezer, and finish opening this piece of mail.
P.P.S.
Yeah, that’s me. I used to be a Letter Carrier with the United States Postal Service.
And yes, I wore “the shorts”.
P.P.P.S.
My great-great-greandfather, the notorious frontiersman, Ephraim K Hanks, carried the US mail, as well. He was a station master and carried for the Pony Express – risking his life to connect people across a sprawling continent via the only technology that has remained secure to this day: ink on paper.
