20130730

Citizendium - Cypherpunk

A cypherpunk is an activist advocating widespread use of strong cryptography as a route to social and political change. There has been an active cypherpunk movement since about 1990, heavily influenced by the hacker tradition and by libertarian ideas. Through most of the 90s, there was a very active cypherpunk mailing list and many cypherpunks were involved in the intense political and legal controversies around cryptography of the period. Most have remained active into the 21st century, and others have joined in as the controversies continue.

The basic ideas are in this quote from the Cypherpunk Manifesto:

Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. ... We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy ... We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. ... Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and ... we're going to write it. ...[1]...

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