"The tech powers that be are nothing without our data."
— Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019)
#data #power #resistance #techcompanies
"By understanding that cypherpunk theory and practice each consist of two complementary dynamics—privacy/transparency, pro-active/re-active—it becomes possible to understand that the cypherpunk movement provides the basis for activists and citizens to resist large surveillance institutions."
— Patrick D. Anderson (Of Cypherpunks and Sousveillance, 2022)
#cypherpunk #privacy #transparency #resistance #surveillance
"Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea. I like the idea of basing security on the assumption that the CPU power of honest participants outweighs that of the attacker."
— Hal Finney (Cryptography Mailing List, 2008)
#bitcoin #security #proofofwork
"The cypherpunks were troublemakers: controversial, radical, unrelenting, but also practical. They made things."
— Jamie Bartlett (Cypherpunks Write Code, American Scientist)
#cypherpunk #code
"We hope this will inspire others to work in this fascinating area in which participation has been discouraged in the recent past by a nearly total government monopoly."
— Whitfield Diffie and Martin E. Hellman (New Directions in Cryptography, 1976)
#cryptography #government #monopoly #freedom
"Again, we need to win political, not technological, victories in order to protect our privacy."
— Hal Finney (Politics vs Technology, 1994)
#politics #privacy
"The cypherpunk movement provides an intelligible, viable, and effective model of data activism and strategic agency."
— Patrick D. Anderson (Of Cypherpunks and Sousveillance, 2022)
#cypherpunk #dataactivism #resistance #agency
"Even more than monetary gain, personal data bestows power on those who collect and analyse it, and that is what makes it so coveted."
— Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019)
#data #power #surveillance #privacy
"Most people are unaware of how visible email is. Email could be intercepted by a lot of parties along the way, it could be captured and logged, scanned and then used years later."
— Philip Zimmermann (GrepLaw, 2003)
#email #surveillance #privacy #interception
"That's why our primary defense isn't law, but technology."
— Julian Assange (Forbes, 2010)
#law #defense #wikileaks
"Building security from day one is much easier than adding it on as an afterthought."
— Martin Hellman (Charles Babbage Institute Oral History, 2004)
#security
"Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live."
— John Perry Barlow (A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996)
#cypherpunk #bitcoin #privacy #freedom #cyberspace #philosophy #digitalworld
"Trusted third parties are security holes."
— Nick Szabo (Trusted Third Parties are Security Holes, 2001)
#cypherpunk #bitcoin #privacy #freedom #security #trust #decentralization
"Privacy gives each of us more control over his own life—which on average, if not in every case, is likely to lead to a freer world."
— David D. Friedman (The Case for Privacy, 2005)
#cypherpunk #bitcoin #privacy #freedom #control
"Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer.'"
— Richard Stallman (GNU Project, 1985)
#cypherpunk #bitcoin #privacy #freedom #free-software #liberty #open-source
"What if everyone believed that law-abiding citizens should use postcards for their mail? If a nonconformist tried to assert his privacy by using an envelope, it would draw suspicion."
— Philip Zimmermann (Why I Wrote PGP, 1991)
#cypherpunk #bitcoin #privacy #freedom #encryption #conformity
"I am fascinated by Tim May's crypto-anarchy. Unlike the communities traditionally associated with the word 'anarchy', in a crypto-anarchy the government is not temporarily destroyed but permanently forbidden and permanently unnecessary."
— Wei Dai (b-money proposal, 1998)
#cypherpunk #bitcoin #privacy #freedom #crypto-anarchy #b-money #governance
"Pretty Good Privacy empowers people to take their privacy into their own hands. There has been a growing social need for it."
— Philip Zimmermann (Why I Wrote PGP, 1991)
#cypherpunk #bitcoin #privacy #freedom #pgp #empowerment
"Digital signatures using public-key cryptosystems provide verification of both integrity and authenticity of messages."
— Ralph Merkle (Secrecy, Authentication, and Public Key Systems, 1979)
#cypherpunk #bitcoin #privacy #freedom #digital-signatures #cryptography #authentication
"Anyone who says they have a system that's perfectly secure from attackers is lying."
— Cory Doctorow (Little Brother, 2008)
#cypherpunk #bitcoin #privacy #freedom #security #hacking #truth
"A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy."
— Tim May (The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, 1988)
#cypherpunk #bitcoin #privacy #freedom #crypto-anarchy #manifesto