Open Secrecy: How Technology Empowers the Digital Underworld

Examines how the global digital underground is liberated by "open secrecy"—a novel and ominous mix of tools for mass communication and anonymity

Shadowy groups are increasingly capable of collective action. Using military-grade encryption, rerouting software, and cryptocurrencies, anonymous and pseudonymous actors can now communicate, solve problems, recruit members, and manage resources across multiple public and semipublic spaces. This swirling mix of secrecy and openness enables people to move through cyberspace like nomads with verifiable personas, which makes them impossible to stop.

Isak Ladegaard takes readers inside a dark, digital economy for banned drugs that has survived numerous police crackdowns, examines how activist software developers in China and other countries have maintained paths to the open internet, and documents how the American far right uses the same tools to sustain antisocial movements based on paranoia and hate. Timely and perceptive, Open Secrecy argues that although information technology enables mass surveillance, it also undermines state power by boosting groups that evade its rule. These dual forces of control and liberation are propelling us forward, with no one at the wheel.

"A fascinating, expertly researched, and beautifully written examination of the juxtaposition between openness and secrecy in the dark digital underbelly of the internet."—Alexandrea Ravenelle, author of Side Hustle Safety Net: How Vulnerable Workers Survive Precarious Times