"You use envelopes for postal mail. You use it for love letters, business letters and your medical records. The only way to create the digital equivalent of an envelope is to encrypt."
— Philip Zimmermann (GrepLaw, 2003)
#encryption #privacy #email #envelopes
"Bitcoin isn't just money for the internet. It's a new form of money that is native to the internet."
— Andreas Antonopoulos (Mastering Bitcoin, 2014)
#bitcoin #internet #money
"The State will of course try to slow or halt the spread of this technology, citing national security concerns, use of the technology by drug dealers and tax evaders, and fears of societal disintegration."
— Tim May (The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, 1988)
#government #regulation
"Advances in information technology have made possible the rise of a truly international currency that does not depend on a central bank."
— Nick Szabo (Bit Gold, 2005)
#digitalcurrency #centralbank #international
"Bitcoin is the most significant computer science breakthrough in the last 20 years."
— Adam Back (Conference speech, 2017)
#bitcoin #computerscience
"What is the greatest unsolved problem in cryptography today? Lack of user awareness."
— Martin Hellman (Charles Babbage Institute Oral History, 2004)
#cryptography
"Mathematics is not the law."
— Tim May (CoinDesk, 2018)
#mathematics #law #cryptography #philosophy
"They're abridging the freedom and privacy of all citizens—to defend us against a bogeyman that they will not explain. The decision to literally trade away our privacy is one that must be made by the whole society, not made unilaterally by a military spy agency."
— John Gilmore (Crypto Rebels (WIRED), 1993)
#privacy #freedom #government #nsa #democracy
"There is nothing quite so disempowering as a government that can read all your most intimate thoughts and correspondence."
— Philip Zimmermann (Why I Wrote PGP, 1991)
#surveillance #government #privacy
"The goal of electronic cash is to allow these same kinds of private transactions to take place electronically."
— Hal Finney (Protecting privacy with electronic cash, 1993)
#digitalcash #privacy #transactions
"Crypto anarchy is not just about avoiding laws. It's about making certain laws unenforceable, and hence making them obsolete."
— Tim May (Cypherpunks Mailing List, 1992)
#cryptoanarchy #law #enforcement
"Fundamentally, I believe we will have the kind of society that most people want. If we want freedom and privacy, we must persuade others that these are worth having. There are no shortcuts."
— Hal Finney (Politics vs Technology, 1994)
#freedom #privacy
"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)
#freesoftware #liberty #opensource
"Google and Facebook are not really in the business of data – they are in the business of power."
— Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019)
#surveillance #power #techcompanies #data
"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
"Cryptography is the ultimate form of non-violent direct action."
— Julian Assange (Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, 2012)
#cryptography #nonviolence
"That's why our primary defense isn't law, but technology."
— Julian Assange (Forbes, 2010)
#law #defense #wikileaks
"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
"We live in a golden age for surveillance. Everything you do can be captured."
— Jacob Appelbaum (30C3 Congress, 2013)
#surveillance #privacy
"Cash is an escape valve in our increasingly intermediated and therefore surveilled world."
— Jerry Brito (The Case for Electronic Cash, 2019)
#cash #privacy #surveillance #freedom
