"In a world without cash (a bearer and peer-to-peer form of money) all transactions must be necessarily intermediated by financial institutions. Intermediated transactions are by their nature subject to surveillance and control." — Jerry Brito (The Case for Electronic Cash, 2019) #cash #surveillance #control #intermediation

"A cashless economy is a surveillance economy." — Jerry Brito (The Case for Electronic Cash, 2019) #cash #surveillance #privacy #economics

"Perhaps we never fully understand that balance until one of those secret rights disappears without warning, because no one even knew it mattered until it was gone." — Peter Valkenburgh (Your Secret Right to Cash, 2017) #rights #warning #privacy #freedom

"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

"The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen." — Julian Assange (Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, 2012) #internet #surveillance #totalitarianism

"We need to make cryptography the solution to the problem: 'how do you make surveillance more expensive?'" — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #cryptography #surveillance #resistance

"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

"Security is a process, not a product." — Bruce Schneier (Secrets and Lies, 2000) #security

"You may have protected files, but if a subpoena was served to the system manager, it wouldn't do you any good. The administrators would sell you out, because they'd have no interest in going to jail." — Whitfield Diffie (Crypto Rebels (WIRED), 1993) #privacy #trust #decentralization #security

"End-to-end encryption should be the default for all communication." — Moxie Marlinspike (Signal blog, 2016) #encryption #privacy

"The keyboard is the great equalizer — better than the Glock .45." — St. Jude (Jude Milhon) (Modem Grrrl (Wired), 1995) #technology #empowerment #equality #defense

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

"Privacy is the foundation that allows freedom of speech, thought, and association to thrive. Without it, these freedoms exist only on paper and can't be exercised in practice in a meaningful way." — Zooko Wilcox (Cypherpunk Technologies Press Release, 2023) #privacy #freespeech #freedom

"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love." — Julian Assange (State and Terrorist Conspiracies, 2006)

"Tracking everyone is no longer inconceivable, and is in fact happening all the time." — Moxie Marlinspike (We Should All Have Something To Hide, 2013) #surveillance #tracking #privacy #warning

"It is tempting to try for the best of both worlds—to restrict the privacy of bad people while protecting that of good, permit governments to collect detailed information about us but only allow it to be used for good purposes. But somebody must decide who are the good people and the bad, what purposes are worthy or unworthy. Whoever that somebody is will have his own agenda, his own purposes. Angels are in short supply." — David D. Friedman (The Case for Privacy, 2005) #privacy #government #freedom

"We are on a path today which, if nothing changes, will lead to a world with the potential for greater government power, intrusion, and control. We can change this; these technologies can revolutionize the relationship between individuals and organizations, putting them both on an equal footing for the first time." — Hal Finney (Protecting privacy with electronic cash, 1993) #government #freedom

"If you go into a store today and make a purchase with cash, no records are left tying you personally to the transaction. With no records, there is nothing to go into a computer database. 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

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind." — John Perry Barlow (A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996) #cyberspace #independence #government

"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