A special report from Shamus Gerry III
This week, a federal judge delivered a verdict that should send a chill down the spine of every American who files their taxes.
The Internal Revenue Service, the most feared financial institution in the country, broke the law approximately 42,695 times by illegally sharing confidential taxpayer data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Let that sink in.
The agency that holds your most sensitive financial information secretly handed it over to an enforcement agency, violating one of the strictest privacy laws on the books. They didn’t do it once or twice. They did it tens of thousands of times.
This is not just a data breach. It is a weaponization of the tax system itself.
It is the transformation of a civic duty into a tool of surveillance and control. And it is a terrifying echo of a story that played out 2,000 years ago in Roman Britain, when a greedy tax collector and a humiliated queen showed the world what happens when an empire turns its financial machinery against its own people.
The result was fire, blood, and the complete annihilation of three Roman cities.
The Procurator and the Queen
In the year 60 AD, the Roman province of Britannia was a tinderbox. The Iceni tribe, who inhabited modern-day Norfolk, had been a loyal client kingdom of Rome. Their king, Prasutagus, had tried to keep the peace by leaving his kingdom jointly to the Roman Emperor and his own two daughters in his will.
It was a fatal miscalculation.
Upon his death, Rome ignored the will. The new procurator, a man named Catus Decianus, saw only an opportunity for plunder. He was not a governor concerned with justice; he was a financial administrator, and his job was to extract wealth for Rome.
“The greedy provincial financial administrator, procurator Catus Decianus, demanded the return of large sums of coin given to the Briton nobles by the late emperor Claudius. Similarly, Seneca, the emperor’s chief secretary, had imposed a 40 million sesterces loan on the Britons and now demanded its return with heavy interest.”
The Romans used their own financial records—the loans they had made, the tribute they were owed—as a pretext to seize the Iceni’s land. When the nobles resisted, Catus Decianus unleashed his soldiers.
The king’s widow, Queen Boudica, was publicly flogged. Her young daughters were raped.
It was an act of profound, calculated cruelty.
The Romans were not just collecting a debt. They were using financial power to break a people, to humiliate a leader, and to demonstrate that the intricate system of Roman law and finance was not a tool for justice, but a weapon of control.
The Revolt That Burned Roman Britain
The abuse of power by Catus Decianus ignited a firestorm. Boudica, her body scarred and her family violated, called her people to war. She was joined by the neighboring Trinovantes, who had their own grievances with the Romans.
The rebels’ first target was Camulodunum (Colchester), the Roman provincial capital. It was a city built on stolen land, a symbol of Roman oppression. The Britons fell upon it with savage fury and burned it to the ground.
Next, they marched on Londinium (London), a thriving commercial hub. The Roman governor, Suetonius Paulinus, abandoned the city, knowing he could not defend it. Boudica’s army descended and slaughtered the inhabitants, destroying the city completely.
Then came Verulamium (St. Albans). It, too, was sacked and burned.
In a matter of weeks, the economic heart of Roman Britain had been turned to ash.
Tacitus, the Roman historian, estimates that 70,000 to 80,000 Romans and their allies were killed. It was a brutal, bloody, and shockingly successful revolt, all sparked by a tax man who believed the rules didn’t apply to him.
And what of Catus Decianus, the man who started it all?
Tacitus tells us that when he heard of the disaster he had caused, he fled in terror to Gaul. He lit the fuse, then ran from the explosion.
The Lesson: A System That Betrays Trust Will Be Destroyed
Today, the IRS has committed a similar, if less bloody, betrayal.
The American tax system, for all its flaws, is built on a foundation of trust. Citizens hand over their most private financial details with the legal expectation that the information will be kept confidential and used only for its intended purpose: funding the government.
The moment the IRS begins sharing that data with enforcement agencies for other purposes, that trust is shattered.
“The IRS not only failed to ensure that ICE’s request for confidential taxpayer address information met the statutory requirements, but this failure led the IRS to disclose confidential taxpayer addresses to ICE in situations where ICE’s request for that information was patently deficient.”
— U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, February 26, 2026
Just as Catus Decianus used financial records to target the Iceni, the IRS has used tax records to target immigrants. The principle is identical: the weaponization of a financial system against a specific population.
The acting IRS commissioner resigned over the deal, just as Catus fled to Gaul. The leaders who make these decisions often escape the immediate consequences, but the damage to the system is profound.
When the people no longer trust the tax man, the entire system begins to crumble.
Boudica’s revolt was not just about money. It was about the violation of trust, the abuse of power, and the breaking of a sacred contract between ruler and ruled. The IRS’s 42,695 violations are a modern echo of that same betrayal.
The Action: Build Your Own Treasury
When the institutions you are forced to trust prove themselves untrustworthy, the only rational response is to build your own systems of security and independence. The IRS scandal is a stark reminder that your data, your privacy, and your security are not guaranteed by the government.
True security is not found in a government that secretly violates its own laws. It is found in tangible assets. It is found in the land. It is the independence of knowing you can provide for your family, no matter how corrupt or broken the systems in Washington become.
That is why we champion the 4ft Farm Blueprint. It is not just a method for growing food. It is a blueprint for creating your own personal treasury, a resilient homestead that is insulated from the failures and betrayals of a distant government.
To understand the full scope of the challenges we face and the solutions available, explore our network of resources:
- HomesteaderDepot.com: Tools and knowledge for the self-reliant life.
- SelfRelianceReport.com: In-depth analysis of the threats to our freedom.
- SurvivalStronghold.com: Strategies for protecting your family in a crisis.
- SevenHolistics.com: Health independence from a broken medical system.
The Romans learned that a financial system without trust leads to ruin. We are being taught the same lesson today.
It is time to build something that cannot be betrayed.
