"Digital pseudonyms, the creation of persistent network personas that cannot be forged by others and yet which are unlinkable to the 'true names' of their owners, are finding major uses in ensuring free speech, in allowing controversial opinions to be aired, and in providing for economic transactions that cannot be blocked by local governments." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994) #freespeech #anonymity #economics

"Technology has let the genie out of the bottle. Crypto anarchy is liberating individuals from coercion by their physical neighbors—who cannot know who they are on the Net—and from governments." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994) #cryptoanarchy #freedom #government

"Truth happens. We will succeed. Don't wait around for others to take action. We must dive head first without regard for consequences, and break the inertia of passivity." — Amir Taaki (The libbitcoin Manifesto, 2013) #resistance #freedom

"There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture." — Aaron Swartz (Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, 2008) #civildisobedience #openaccess

"The last characteristic which we note in the history of cryptography is the division between amateur and professional cryptographers. Skill in production cryptanalysis has always been heavily on the side of the professionals, but innovation, particularly in the design of new types of cryptographic systems, has come primarily from the amateurs." — Whitfield Diffie and Martin E. Hellman (New Directions in Cryptography, 1976) #cryptography #innovation #amateur #freedom

"Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship. And in the same manner that very significant resources spent on China's firewall, the result is that anyone who's motivated can work around it." — Julian Assange (Forbes, 2010) #censorship #leaks

"If everyone's every action were being monitored, and everyone technically violates some obscure law at some time, then punishment becomes purely selective. Those in power will essentially have what they need to punish anyone they'd like, whenever they choose, as if there were no rules at all." — Moxie Marlinspike (We Should All Have Something To Hide, 2013) #surveillance #selectiveenforcement #power #law

"Arise, You have nothing to lose but your barbed-wire fences." — Steven Levy (Crypto Rebels (WIRED), 1993) #cypherpunk #freedom #resistance

"Bitcoin is not a list of cryptographic features, it's a very complex system of interacting mathematics and protocols in pursuit of what was a very unpopular goal." — Nick Szabo (Bitcoin, what took ye so long?, 2011) #bitcoin #cryptography #protocols

"The people in this room hope for a world where an individual's informational footprints—everything from an opinion on abortion to the medical record of an actual abortion—can be traced only if the individual involved chooses to reveal them; a world where coherent messages shoot around the globe by network and microwave, but intruders and feds trying to pluck them out of the vapor find only gibberish." — Steven Levy (Crypto Rebels (WIRED), 1993) #privacy #cypherpunk #encryption #freedom

"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

"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

"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting." — Edward Snowden (The Guardian Interview, 2013) #nsa #surveillance #masssurveillance

"I would like to die peacefully in my sleep, knowing that I helped create a better world for those who come after me." — Hal Finney (BitcoinTalk Forum, 2013)

"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

"Building security from day one is much easier than adding it on as an afterthought." — Martin Hellman (Charles Babbage Institute Oral History, 2004) #security

"I even question Mike's point about the government's inability to ban books. Look at the difficulty in keeping PGP available in this country even though it is legal. Not only have FTP sites been steadily closed down, even the key servers have as well." — Hal Finney (Politics vs Technology, 1994) #government #censorship #politics #pgp

"The tech powers that be are nothing without our data." — Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019) #data #power #resistance #techcompanies

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

"'Swiss banks in cyberspace' will make economic transactions much more liquid and much less subject to local rules and regulations." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994) #digitalcash #economics #regulation #freedom