Why I Say "Western Citizen"

I wrote "the average Western citizen does not need to know how to configure Tor." That is a deliberate choice of words. Western. Not everyone.

In dictatorships, tools like Tor are not curiosities for privacy enthusiasts. They are critical infrastructure for free communication. Journalists, dissidents, activists, and ordinary people living under authoritarian regimes rely on these tools to speak freely, organize, and access information that their governments do not want them to see. For them, knowing how to configure Tor is not a hobby - it is a survival skill.

I say "Western" because people living in functioning democracies with independent courts, free press, and constitutional protections have a fundamentally different relationship to these tools. The average person in Germany or Canada does not need an anonymity network to read the news or talk to their friends. Their government is not going to disappear them for a social media post.

But that distinction is not permanent.

Some European countries are showing authoritarian tendencies. Erosion of judicial independence, attacks on press freedom, expansion of surveillance powers without meaningful oversight - these things are happening in EU member states right now. If those trends continue, the citizens of those countries may find themselves in a position where tools like Tor are no longer optional.

This does not mean that any current Western government should be blindly trusted. It does not mean that surveillance capabilities will never be misused. The history of intelligence agencies includes documented abuses - COINTELPRO, the Stasi, and others. The question of who watches the watchers is real and important.

But that is a separate conversation from the one in the article. The article is about engineering. The argument I am making there is narrow: that in a stable democracy, the general public does not benefit from knowing the operational details of intelligence programs. The people who do need that knowledge - security researchers, policymakers, oversight bodies - already have access to it through proper channels.

For everyone else, the knowledge creates risk without corresponding benefit. That is what I mean. And I am careful to say "Western" because I know it is not true everywhere.