"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

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

"By the 1990s, at the NSA at least, they figured out that it was impossible to totally snuff the stuff, and that there was a need for some form of crypto for citizens. So the idea was to keep the strong stuff out of general usage, by banning its export." — Steven Levy (The WELL - Crypto Discussion, 2001) #nsa #cryptography #exportlaws #government

"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 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

"Again, we need to win political, not technological, victories in order to protect our privacy." — Hal Finney (Politics vs Technology, 1994) #politics #privacy

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

"The real value in encryption and the real threat to intelligence operations, both law enforcement and national security, is integrated, automatic encryption." — Martin Hellman (Charles Babbage Institute Oral History, 2004) #encryption #intelligence #surveillance

"I wanted to empower people to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness." — Ross Ulbricht (Letter to Judge Forrest, 2015) #freedom #empowerment

"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

"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

"A phase change is coming. Virtual communities are in their ascendancy, displacing conventional notions of nationhood. Geographic proximity is no longer as important as it once was." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994)

"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

"You can pay for access to a database, download a program, or have a prescription filled — without anyone being able to trace the transaction back to you." — David Chaum (Security Without Identification, 1985) #privacy #transactions #anonymity

"That cryptographic work is deeply tied to politics is a claim so obvious that only a cryptographer could fail to see it." — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #cryptography #politics

"I believed in the idea of giving people the freedom to buy and sell and connect with each other without the all-seeing eye of government watching every move." — Ross Ulbricht (Letter to Judge Forrest, 2015) #freedom #privacy

"I can't speak for what Satoshi intended, but I sure don't think it involved bitcoin exchanges that have draconian rules about KYC, AML, passports, freezes on accounts and laws about reporting 'suspicious activity' to the local secret police." — Tim May (CoinDesk, 2018) #bitcoin #surveillance #kyc #regulation

"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

"The simplest open protocol that is able to create a censorship-resistant global social network." — fiatjaf (Nostr Protocol Documentation, 2020) #nostr #protocol #censorshipresistance

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