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Eric Hughes: A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto

Isolation 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 sphere 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 universe.

Eric Hughes: A Cypherpunk's Manifesto
**The following essay was written by Eric Hughes and published on March 9, 1993. “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto” was originally published on activism.net and is reprinted here on Bitcoin.com for documented preservation. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any opinions, content, accuracy or excellence within the historical editorial.**

If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their interaction. Each gang can speak about their own memory of this; how could anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it, but the scope of speech, even more than privacy, is fundamental to an open society; we seek not to restrict any speech at all. If many wingdings speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and other advocates. The power of electronic communications has enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might destitution it to.

Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have knowledge only of that which is instantly necessary for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In sundry cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no necessary 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 address 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 pays. When my identity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I essential always reveal myself.

Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, dough has been the primary such system. An anonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system empowers individuals to carnival their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy.

Privacy in an open way of life 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 at ones fingertips 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 prurience for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one’s identity with assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.

We cannot calculate governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to selected of us, and we should expect that they will speak. To try to prevent their speech is to fight against the realities of dope. Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the available storage organize. Information is Rumor’s younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and comprehends less than Rumor.

Eric Hughes: A Cypherpunk's Manifesto

We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create organizations, which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with hints, 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 offered to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic paper 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 accepted 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 anguish 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.

Eric Hughes: A Cypherpunk's Manifesto

Cypherpunks deplore statutes 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 on the contrary 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 acta systems that it makes possible.

For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must up with 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 look for 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 execution because some may disagree with our goals.

The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy. Let us proceed together apace.

Moving onward.

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Identifies in this story
Activism.net, Anarcho-capitalism, Bitcoin, crypto anarchy, Cypherpunk, encryption, Eric Hughes, Historical Reprint, Julian Assange, Furnish Anarchy, Public-Key Cryptography, tim may

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