"In one direction lies unprecedented scrutiny and control of people's lives; in the other, secure parity between individuals and organizations. The shape of society in the next century may depend on which approach predominates." — David Chaum (Security Without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete, 1985) #privacy #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

"How can we translate the freedom afforded by the Internet to ordinary life?" — Jim Bell (Assassination Politics, 1997) #freedom #internet #cypherpunk

"Cypherpunk cryptography has been described as crypto with an attitude. But it is much more than that, for, more than anything else, what the cypherpunks wanted was crypto with values." — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #cypherpunk #cryptography

"Be interested in liberty and the freedom to transact and speak to get back to the original motivations. Don't spend time trying to make government-friendly financial alternatives." — Tim May (CoinDesk, 2018) #liberty #freedom #transactions #government

"The key question at the heart of the cypherpunk movement was not freedom, but the crisis of freedom in a situation of extensive social control of dominant institutions over private individuals." — Enrico Beltramini (Against technocratic authoritarianism, 2020) #cypherpunk #freedom #surveillance #control

"Using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous 'digital cash,' it would be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given." — Jim Bell (Assassination Politics, 1997) #encryption #digitalcash #anonymity #privacy

"That's why our primary defense isn't law, but technology." — Julian Assange (Forbes, 2010) #law #defense #wikileaks

"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

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." — Edward Snowden (Reddit AMA, 2015) #privacy #freespeech

"Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age." — Eric Hughes (A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, 1993) #privacy #manifesto

"Since cryptography is a tool for shifting power, the people who know this subject well, like it or not, inherit some of that power." — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #cryptography

"What is the greatest unsolved problem in cryptography today? Lack of user awareness." — Martin Hellman (Charles Babbage Institute Oral History, 2004) #cryptography

"We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence." — Eric Hughes (A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, 1993) #privacy #government #corporations

"We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity." — John Perry Barlow (A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996) #freespeech #conformity

"Power over others' privacy is the quintessential kind of power in the digital age" — Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019) #privacy #power #digitalage #surveillance

"The age of the printable gun has arrived, and there's nothing anyone can do about it." — Cody Wilson (Come and Take It, 2016) #3dprinting

"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

"If we had a mapping which took the fixed digicash bits onto the interesting parts of the fractal, then fake cash would not produce pretty pictures, while real cash would produce some part of a beautiful fractal. Again, you would have validation and beauty being tied together." — Hal Finney (The Beauty of ECash, 1994) #digitalcash #cryptography

"The scandal isn't how they're breaking the law. The scandal is that they don't have to break the law." — Edward Snowden (Joe Rogan Experience, 2019) #surveillance #law #government #legal