"Cryptography can make possible a world in which people have control over information about themselves, not because government has granted them that control, but because only they possess the cryptographic keys to reveal that information. This is the world we are working to create." — Hal Finney (Protecting privacy with electronic cash, 1993) #cryptography #privacy #government

"The internet is a tool of freedom and self-determination. Meddling in its mechanics is destructive. Whenever a website is blocked, a protocol is corrupted at some low level or undesirable traffic shaping occurs then seismic ripples of censorship and destruction lead to degradation of the network. The internet is fundamental to humanity, and must be protected at all costs." — Amir Taaki (The libbitcoin Manifesto, 2013) #internet #freedom #censorship #resistance

"Strong cryptography can resist an unlimited amount of violence. No amount of coercive force will ever solve a math problem." — Tim May (Cypherpunks Mailing List, 1993) #cryptography #violence #mathematics

"There is power in knowing. By protecting our privacy, we prevent others from being empowered with knowledge about us that can be used against our interests." — Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019) #privacy #power #knowledge #surveillance

"A hash function should be a one-way function — easy to compute but difficult to reverse." — Ralph Merkle (A Certified Digital Signature, 1989) #cryptography

"Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social power structure, so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions." — Tim May (The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, 1988) #cryptography #economics

"The government used to actually be able to control powerful crypto, because none of it existed outside its control. When the cow is in the barn, it's simple to keep it in the barn. But when an independent community started making breakthroughs and publishing papers, the task became more difficult." — Steven Levy (The WELL - Crypto Discussion, 2001) #government #cryptography #control #freedom

"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

"The cypherpunks were troublemakers: controversial, radical, unrelenting, but also practical. They made things." — Jamie Bartlett (Cypherpunks Write Code, American Scientist) #cypherpunk #code

"It's not data that's being exploited. It's people that are being exploited. It's not data that's being manipulated, it's you that's being manipulated." — Edward Snowden (Joe Rogan Experience, 2019) #surveillance #privacy

"I am active in policy space rather writing code, doing a lot of public speaking. There is a lot of need for activism now in the shadow of the Patriot Act." — Philip Zimmermann (GrepLaw, 2003) #patriotact #surveillance

"If cryptography's most basic aim is to enable secure communications, how could it not be a colossal failure of our field when ordinary people lack even a modicum of communication privacy when interacting electronically?" — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #cryptography #privacy

"The NSA's cryptographic monopoly has evaporated." — Steven Levy (Crypto Rebels (WIRED), 1993) #nsa #cryptography #monopoly #freedom

"Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture them." — Julian Assange (Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, 2012)

"Public key cryptography is a revolution that puts control of privacy into the hands of the individual." — Whitfield Diffie (New Directions in Cryptography, 1976) #cryptography #publickey #privacy

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

"Just as a merchant will accept cash from a customer without demanding proof of identity, we also want our electronic money system to allow similar transactions to take place, without the identity of the people involved being revealed to each other, or even to someone who is monitoring the network." — Hal Finney (Protecting privacy with electronic cash, 1993) #digitalcash #anonymity #privacy

"You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts." — John Perry Barlow (A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996) #government #regulation #cyberspace

"If the federal government had access to every email you've ever written and every phone call you've ever made, it's almost certain that they could find something you've done which violates a provision in the 27,000 pages of federal statues or 10,000 administrative regulations. You probably do have something to hide, you just don't know it yet." — Moxie Marlinspike (We Should All Have Something To Hide, 2013) #privacy #surveillance #law #nothingtohide

"I think the greed and hype and nattering about 'to the Moon!' and 'HODL' is the biggest hype wagon I've ever seen." — Tim May (CoinDesk, 2018) #bitcoin #hype #greed #criticism