Get This Book Anonymously

Buying A Public Service online or even visiting this webpage has the potential to mark you as a soon-to-be-whistleblower. If you are considering disclosing information, it is important to leave minimal traces of yourself and your intention from the very beginning. While reading this book should be anyone’s first step, obtaining it can be a challenge. A sort of chicken or the egg situation. Below I have provided some options on how to get the information in the book without anyone knowing you are doing so.


Browsing the Web Anonymously

Before we get into actual techniques for procuring this book anonymously, let us start by thinking through how to view this webpage anonymously. The simplest way to view a webpage without it being connected to your identity is to go old school: Use a public computer, perhaps one at a public library to browse the web. 

If you don't want to leave your home or think physical access to a public computer could lead to other identity issues, the Tor Browser is your best bet. It is a web browser that routes all of your traffic through the Tor network, making any information you view online completely anonymous. Download and install the Tor Browser at https://www.torproject.org/download/. 

Of course, please do more research on the pros and cons of this tool. In some cases using this software can make your computer stick out like a sore thumb on your network, but generally, this is the easiest and most widely recommended route to getting online anonymously.

Physical Book

The easiest way to obtain this book anonymously is to buy it in cash while wearing your favorite disguise. Reading a physical book is anonymous (you might want to cover up the cover in public). Look for the book at your local bookstore or at your local library.

Buying the physical book online can be tied to your identity: 1) you need to mail it somewhere and retrieve it, if you mail it to yourself, your name and address will be associated with the book in the publisher’s database and 2) your payment method and receipt of the book will be logged in the publisher’s shopping system. So please think carefully before simply buying the book online with a credit card. Of course, this all depends on your threat model. If you work within the intelligence community in the government be very careful about buying this book using a traditional method, but if you simply work in a corporate office or are just interested in the topic, you may have nothing to fear. Your potential adversary may have no way to trace your purchase of this book.

Ebook

The digital version, on the other hand, is much easier to procure. There is the tough way to do this which involves buying and using Bitcoin anonymously to pay for the book, this is difficult and takes a lot of work, but can be done.

The other technique is to buy with cash a $25 prepaid VISA or Mastercard gift card from a grocery store and use it to buy the ebook. I tested this with a $25 VISA Vanilla gift card and it worked flawlessly. There are a few tricks to making this go smoothly:

  • Buy the gift card in cash and make sure you buy a $25 one, not a variable amount card, variable amount cards tend to have more security issues.

  • Open the Tor Browser and start a new email account, https://10minutemail.net/ will give you a disposable email account for 10 minutes, if you need more time, remember to click “Give me 10 more minutes!” So that it doesn’t expire while you are in the middle of the transaction.

  • Use the Tor Browser to visit https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/a-public-service/ to buy the ebook and add it to your cart.

  • Unfortunately, to actually checkout, you will have to enable two scripts (I would love to not be relying on javascript for this purchase, but it wasn’t my decision). Do this in the top right of your Tor Browser, by clicking the NoScript logo and clicking on the top two scripts that show up. Then proceed with checking out as a guest.

  • During the checkout process add all fake information about yourself, but do use the temporary email account you created, and use something like 10001 or another real US zip code during checkout.

  • Fill in the gift card information and upon purchase, you will get an email to your temporary email address with downloads for the ebook in various formats

The other way to obtain the ebook anonymously is to hunt around the dark web and peer sharing networks to see if anyone has leaked a copy. As of right now, no one has, but who knows what may happen in the future. 

Good luck and be safe!