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- A Cypherpunk's Manifesto
- Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age.
- Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't
- want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one
- doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively
- reveal oneself to the world.
- If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of
- their interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory of
- this; how could anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it,
- but the freedom of speech, even more than privacy, is fundamental to
- an open society; we seek not to restrict any speech at all. If many
- parties speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all the
- others and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and other
- parties. The power of electronic communications has enabled such
- group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want it
- to.
- Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a
- transaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessary
- for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we
- must ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most cases
- personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a
- store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am.
- When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages,
- my provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying
- or what others are saying to me; my provider only need know how to
- get the message there and how much I owe them in fees. When my
- identity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction,
- I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I must
- _always_ reveal myself.
- Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction
- systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. An
- anonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An
- anonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when
- desired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy.
- Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say
- something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If
- the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no
- privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to
- encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for
- privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one's identity with assurance when
- the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.
- We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless
- organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to
- their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will
- speak. To try to prevent their speech is to fight against the
- realities of information. Information does not just want to be free,
- it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the available
- storage space. Information is Rumor's younger, stronger cousin;
- Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and
- understands less than Rumor.
- We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must
- come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions
- to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for
- centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret
- handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow
- for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.
- We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We
- are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail
- forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic
- money.
- Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software
- to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do,
- we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow
- Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all
- to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the
- software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that
- a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.
- Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is
- fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes
- information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography
- reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence.
- Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with
- it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible.
- For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract.
- People must come and together deploy these systems for the common
- good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one's
- fellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek your questions and your
- concerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not deceive
- ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because
- some may disagree with our goals.
- The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for
- privacy. Let us proceed together apace.
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