Bibliography

1.) 

Conclusion

How does all this historical information relate to rights and responsibilities?

People come to America to live the American Dream. They want to buy a house, start a business and raise a family. They also come to America because it is a supposed "free country". You won't be dictated to by a supreme lord, and you will have privacy and security in your own home. These are rights that are given to American citizens. They also have the responsibility to abide to fair laws, in addition to having these rights. You cannot have everything and give nothing back. The Romans used spying primarily to spy on their own people. Although they were trying to find evidence of a possible attack or rebellion, they went against their own citizens. Of course, it was a harsh dictatorship back in Roman times. However, most of the spies from colonial America spied only on enemies, rather than on their own people. They did spy on people living on American soil; however these people were from the enemies land. In that way, they are able to justify the spying. Now, with the Constitution in place, the government should not be allowed to spy on its own people, unless it is approved, which probably won't happen. Furthermore, Snowden's leaks showed that the NSA was spying on the US citizens without them knowing, which it certainly against the law. The citizens have the responsibility of upholding laws, and if they do that, their rights should not be taken away. Unfortunately, by the government spying on them, the citizens' rights are being taken away. It does not make sense for this to occur, and it certainly shouldn't. When citizens are given rights, and they have responsibilities to keep those rights, the government should not be able to take away those rights if the responsibilities have been well taken care of. 

Communication and the Culper Spy Ring

The American spies needed an efficient way to communicate without the British knowing what they are up to. This led to the usage of ciphers, invisible ink and other special methods of communication. 

John Jay and Arthur Lee devised dictionary codes in which numbers referred to the page and line in an agreed-upon dictionary edition where the plain text (unencrypted message) could be found. This became one of the most commonly used ciphers of the time.

In 1775, Charles Dumas designed the first diplomatic cipher that the Continental Congress and Benjamin Franklin used to communicate with agents and ministers in Europe. Dumas's system substituted numbers for letters in the order in which they appeared in a preselected paragraph of French prose containing 682 symbols. This method was more secure than the standard alphanumeric substitution system, in which A through Z are replaced with 1 through 26, because each letter in the plain text could be replaced with more than one number.

The Culper Spy Ring used a numerical substitution code developed by Major Benjamin Tallmadge, the network's leader. The Ring began using the code after the British captured some papers indicating that some Americans around New York were using "sympathetic stain." Tallmadge took several hundred words from a dictionary and several dozen names of people or places and assigned each a number from 1 to 763. For example, 38 meant attack, 192 stood for fort, George Washington was identified as 711, and New York was replaced by 727. An American agent posing as a deliveryman transmitted the messages to other members of the Ring. One of them, Anna Strong, signaled the message's location with a code involving laundry hung out to dry. A black petticoat indicated that a message was ready to be picked up, and the number of handkerchiefs identified the cove on Long Island Sound where the agents would meet. By the end of the war, several prominent Americans—among them Robert Morris, John Jay, Robert Livingston, and John Adams—were using other versions of numerical substitution codes.

A picture of Anna Strong, the lady who hung up laundry to signal to the Culper Spy Ring.

The Patriots had two notable successes in breaking British ciphers. In 1775, Elbridge Gerry and the team of Elisha Porter and the Rev. Samuel West, working separately at Washington's direction, decrypted a letter that implicated Dr. Benjamin Church, the Continental Army's chief surgeon, in espionage for the British.

In 1781, James Lovell, who designed cipher systems used by several prominent Americans, determined the encryption method that British commanders used to communicate with each other. When a dispatch from Lord Cornwallis in Yorktown, Virginia, to General Henry Clinton in New York was intercepted, Lovell's cryptanalysis enabled Washington to gauge how desperate Cornwallis's situation was and to time his attack on the British lines. Soon after, another decrypt by Lovell provided warning to the French fleet off Yorktown that a British relief expedition was approaching. The French scared off the British flotilla, sealing victory for the Americans.

The Culper Spy Ring was also a major factor in the usage of these types of code. It was created in 1781 by a young cavalry officer named Benjamin Tallmadge, starting out as a small group of men and women and finishing as one of the greatest spy groups of all time. They were able to collect key information through very simple means, such as hanging laundry up in a specific manner (Anna Strong). Furthermore, they were able to collect very precise naval information, as well as locations where British fortifications were located. Because of their great usage of secret communication mathods, only a few of the members were caught. One of their greatest successes was when they uncovered British plans to ambush the French army in Rhode Island, and they successfully stopped the Franco-American alliance from being damaged or destroyed. They have also been credited with uncovering information involving the correspondence between Benedict Arnold and John Andre.

An example of a cipher employed with secret letters.

Spying during the Revolutionary War

 "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country" - Nathan Hale

Thousands of years after the Roman Empire crumbled, America was beginning to oppose the British rule. To truly gain freedom from the British, they needed to outgun and outsmart them. To outsmart the British, Americans used great spy tactics. Spies could be anyone, ranging from African Americans to children. Because of this, it was hard to figure out whether someone was spying on you or just being a friendly neighbor. Unlike the Romans, the spy network in America was formal, and formed by the government. The beginning of the spy network was created by the Second Continental Congress back in 1775. It was simply known as "The Secret Committee". The society were originally created to snag weapons and ammunition undercover, which would help the Americans gain firepower and know where the British store their weapons. Other than snagging weaponry and ammunition, battle plans and strategies were vital for Americans to find out from the British. Lydia Darragh was a women whose husband owned an inn. In a room above the inn, British generals would gather and talk about various battle plans and actions they would take to steal something from the Americans or attack them. Darragh would listen to these discussions via a hole in the floorboards. She would write everything she heard onto a piece of paper and sew the paper onto her son's coat buttons. Her son would go to a nearby forest and meet with American generals, and give them the paper. 

The Secret Committee was the original spy group, created by the Second Continental Congress in 1775 Like I mentioned earlier, they were concerned with secretly obtaining military supplies and distributing them, as well as selling gunpowder to privateers. This Committee also administered the secret contracts for arms. The Committee was kept as secretive as possible, and any documents that they used were generally destroyed after usage. This helped them stay virtually undetectable for a long time. 

They employed some of their agents overseas, to gather information in England. This was often done with the Committee of Secret Correspondence, another newly-created spy committee. They would gather information about the British ammunition stores, and make arrangements to seize these stores. These missions were also very useful in the southern colonies of America, because of the many British supply stores found there.

The Committee of Secret Correspondence was created just six months after the Secret Committee, due to increasing necessities of foreign agents and alliances. Having two of these committees helped them work overseas, with one group being overseas while another maintained everything in America. Some of the original members of this committee were Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Harrison and Thomas Johnson. Although these men didn't do much of the "dirty work," they were still instrumental in planning out the operations successfully. The Secret Correspondence employed secret agents abroad, conducted covert operations and devised codes and ciphers, among other things. Furthermore, they established a useful courier system, with was utilized well when engaging in communication with British and Scottish sympathizers.

A few years after its creation, it was renamed the Committee of Foreign Affairs. Diplomatic matters became a strong driving factor of this committee, because of the original Secret Committee handling nearly all affairs in America. In 1781, the official Department of Foreign Affairs was created. Their goal was to obtain useful information regarding the foreign affairs. Technically speaking, these committees were spying on their own citizens, albeit spying on British ones. However, unlike the Romans, the committees' goal was not to spy on their own citizens; rather collect information on citizens who may be British and be part of an attack.

Spying in Roman Times

The Romans were very proud people. Being the most dominant force in Europe at the time, they prided themselves on being an unstoppable military force, claiming they won all battles "the hard way". The writers of the Roman era boldly claimed that the Roman armies did not use any forms of trickery of deceit to win battles. Although this statement is mostly true, there was still a significant amount of espionage. 

It is certainly tough to find evidence of secret intelligence that happened more than two thousand years ago. However, the business of secretly collecting information is as old as the human race. Because of this, it is fairly simple to find traces of espionage.

Preceding modern data collection with wires, bugs and cameras, people who wanted information had to get it-without any perks like hidden mics-in order to survive. Simple eavesdropping usually did the trick in those times. Spies can be remarkably valuable to leaders who want to keep playing leader their whole lives. However, if the information collected is not analyzed and used quickly, it can ultimately lead to failure anyways. A famous example of this in the Roman times was the event in which a list of conspirators was thrust into Julius Caesar's hand shortly before he was assassinated. Caesar's intelligence network had done its job. Had the dictator read the message and acted upon it, he might have survived. If the commander or statesman has all the information yet makes a bad decision, it is not an intelligence failure but incompetence or poor judgment on the part of the intelligence consumer.

Rome certainly did not lack enemies to target. Neighboring clans kept the Romans constantly at war. Collecting intelligence about these surrounding tribes and discerning whether they would be friendly or hostile in a given situation was probably a full-time job. During the Etruscan wars, the consul Fabius Maximus sent his brother disguised as an Etruscan peasant into the Ciminian forest to win over the local Umbrians to the Roman cause. The brother was both fluent in Etruscan and a master of disguise. He was sent to reconnoiter areas into which Roman agents were said never to have penetrated. The mission was a success, and Rome was able to bring Umbrian tribes into an alliance.

The Romans continued to use intelligence as they conquered the peoples of the Italian Peninsula. They used scouts on regular assignments against the Samnites and Gauls, and because of advance intelligence they could often catch their enemies by launching surprise attacks and rout their camps.

When Rome leaped into the international arena against the Carthaginians, however, it learned a lesson about how effective advance intelligence could be in the hands of a skilled opponent such as the Carthaginian leader Hannibal. During the Second Punic War (218­201 b.c.), Hannibal placed spies in Roman camps and in Rome itself. We know this because one of those spies whom the Romans caught had his hands cut off, then was released as a warning to other spies. The Carthaginian general's ability to disguise himself, to forge documents, to send secret communications, and to surprise the Romans became legendary. And his agents are said to have had secret hand gestures that they used as a means of recognizing one another. Hannibal used such ingenuity to lure the Romans into traps, as at Lake Trasimene, where he caught the Roman army between the lake and the surrounding mountains. This ruse cost the Romans fifteen thousand killed and an equal number taken prisoner. His famous victory at the Battle of Cannae was another trap–a victory for Hannibal that cost the Romans dearly in lost manpower. 

Not only did Hannibal emphasize good intelligence, he exacted a high price from agents who did not perform well. A scout who had mistakenly taken him to Casilinum and into a trap, when he had been directed to take him to Casinum, was crucified as punishment for his error. Hannibal had the advantage of being sole commander of his forces. As leader of the Carthaginian army and its allies, he was his own chief of intelligence for fourteen years. It was not until the Romans put a single commander, Scipio Africanus, in charge of their armies that they were able to emulate Hannibal's efficient tactics and win the Second Punic War.



I will either find a way, or make one.

Among other ploys, Scipio directed spies to reconnoiter enemy camps. A legate (general in Rome) named Gaius Laelius was fearful the plan would be exposed–that one of the disguised spies, Lucius Statorius, might be recognized since he had previously visited the camp. To protect his agent's cover, Laelius had him publicly caned. The persuasiveness of the action went upon the fact that only peasants and lower-class people would be subjects of corporal punishment. This is another example of how the Romans well-utilized spy tactics to win battles.

By the time Rome conquered the Hellenistic kingdoms in the East and fought the Third Punic War, the republic on the Tiber River had become the center of a Mediterranean empire. What truly surprises people today about the empire was how it managed to prevail with horrible infrastructure. For example, there was no postal-communications system, no government intelligence service, no permanent foreign service, and no decision-making body other than the three-hundred-man Senate. The Romans had nothing resembling a diplomatic corps. They did not even install occupying forces in the East prior to the late second century b.c. 

The main way that the Romans established relations and controlled places that were overseas was by sending embassies, groups of people to places that were overseas. We can assume that they sent them so they could covertly gain intelligence about their subjects. However, every single one of the countries that the embassies visited believed that they were spies. For example, Tiberius Gracchus, when we was touring the East was referred to by Greek historians as a kataskopoi, or spy. However, Rome never truly developed a formal intelligence service, instead using small groups of privately selected people to do spy tasks.

Part of the reason Rome did not want to make the intelligence was because of the way the government developed. The Senate, composed of groups of wealthy, upper-class families, acted with a certain amount of class loyalty that allowed the state to push its interests and expand overseas. But the senate was not of one mind. There was always tremendous personal competition among individuals and families for the wealth and glory that such conquest created. In order to further their wealth, these men needed to know what others were doing and planning, and so they used their private intelligence networks to advance their own careers. Much of the behind the scenes cloak-and-dagger work of senatorial politics is forever lost to us, but it is not hard to imagine what forms it took. Certainly political scandal played its part in launching as well as sinking the careers of numerous senators.

The Romans had no qualms about using espionage on a personal level. Every Roman aristocrat had his private network of business associates, informers, clansmen, slaves, or agents (male or female) who could keep him informed on the latest happenings in the Senate or his own home. Even Roman architects built private homes with counterintelligence in mind. Livius Drusus' architect asked him whether he would like his house built 'in such a way that he would be free from public gaze, safe from all espionage and that no one could look down on it.'

Espionage on a small scale became espionage on a national scale when the nobility took its family interests into the foreign-policy arena. But because each senatorial family had its own private intelligence network, no one group would have sanctioned the creation of a single central intelligence organization that might fall into the hands of a rival faction. Such a collection of individual interests was simply not fertile ground for spawning a single institution that would monitor Rome's overseas interests plus segments of Roman society itself. Even if such a centralized intelligence body were assigned only foreign targets, there might have remained a residual fear that sooner or later such an apparatus would be used to advance the interests of one group over another.

The fact that the intelligence networks were privately owned and operated can be seen clearly in the late republic. Sallust, who wrote an account of the Catiline conspiracy, one of the most notorious threats to the late republic, said it was put down by Cicero using bodyguards, who learned of it through the consul's wide-ranging espionage network that included bodyguards. Pompey and Caesar each had intelligence networks that they used against each other in the civil war that ultimately brought down the republic.

Caesar's agents in Rome kept a close watch on his enemies. Cicero, for example, mentions in a letter that his epigrams were reported to Caesar, who could distinguish between the authentic ones and those falsely attributed to him. As long as Caesar held control of Rome during the civil war, the city's population rejoiced with his victories and mourned his losses, at least publicly. They knew full well there were spies and eavesdroppers prowling about, observing all that was said and done. Caesar's military couriers, the speculatores, were kept busy delivering intelligence but were also given espionage assignments.

Caesar coordinated his intelligence assets well. In this he stands out as an individual who could make the best of the republican system. He established a rapid message and information transport system via couriers, and he also had scouts and spies who used counterintelligence techniques, such as codes and ciphers, to prevent his military plans from falling into the hands of the enemy. 

Quite frequently intelligence couriers doubled as political assassins. The emperor Gordian sent a secret letter that is described by the historian Herodian as having been folded in a manner that was 'the normal method used by the emperor to send private, secret messages.' No further details are given, but evidently such messages were sealed in a certain way and carried by special messengers. In Gordian's case, the message was sent to the governor of Mauretania Caesariensis as part of a covert operation. The agents were disguised as messengers from Maximinus, the emperor's enemy. The governor, Vitalianus, usually went to a small room, off the public court, where he could scrutinize the dispatches carefully. The agents then were instructed to inform him that they were bringing secret instructions from Maximinus and to request a private audience in order to pass these secret instructions on personally. While Vitalianus was examining the seals, they killed him with swords hidden under their cloaks.

Despite their protestations to the contrary, the Romans were heavily involved in espionage, but it cannot be said that they ever established a formal intelligence service. The closest they came was in using groups like the frumentarii and the agentes in rebus for various internal security tasks. Protecting the emperor and keeping him on the throne became so crucial after the third century that most of Rome's intelligence activities were focused inward. Ironically, the Romans were better at spying on each other rather than spying on their enemies.



Map showing the growth of the Roman Empire

An Introduction

A spy is a person who secretly collects and/or reports information on the activities, movements, and plans of an enemy or competitor. Spies have been around since the dawn of mankind, when we were just basic nomads trying to find adequate food and shelter. When you attempt to discreetly look to see what someone is doing, you are considered a spy. 

The Romans used an intricate network of spies to see what their foreign enemies were up to. Being a vast power during that time, the rulers were in constant fear of an attack by an unknown force. They were famous for claiming to simply outbattle their opponents, rather than trick or decieve them. However, being such a power, they needed to have spies so they could make sure their own people we not turning against them. One of their most famous spy commanders was Scipio Africanus. On the battlefield, he was a powerful military commander, using many of Hannibal's strategies and tactics to win the Second Punic War. Off the battlefield, he was a clever commander of an intricate spy network.

Thousands of years later, after Columbus sailed to the Americas, the Americans employed their own system of spies to infiltrate the British lines. Famous spies like Nathan Hale l worked for the US government, while the Roman spies worked for their respective governments. Spies are almost always employed by the government. In some cases, the government themselves can be spies, which can become a very controversial matter. The Edward Snowden NSA leaks are the most recent proof that governments, even governments of supposed "free countries" will still spy on their people.