"Money, like written language, was one of the most important inventions of civilization." — Nick Szabo (Shelling Out: The Origins of Money, 2002) #money #civilization #history

"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

"There has never been a government that didn't sooner or later try to reduce the freedom of its subjects and gain more control over them, and there probably never will be one." — Wei Dai (Cypherpunks mailing list, 1995) #freedom #cypherpunk

"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

"Withdrawing into technology is like pulling the blankets over your head. It feels good for a while, until reality catches up. The next Clipper or Digital Telephony proposal will provide a rude awakening." — Hal Finney (Politics vs Technology, 1994) #politics #warning

"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

"When you expose your privacy, you put us all at risk." — Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019) #privacy #collective #warning #surveillance

"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

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

"When a company goes to develop a product, that has only two options, secure or insecure, they should, from day one, define the product as either secure or insecure." — Martin Hellman (Charles Babbage Institute Oral History, 2004) #security #transparency

"Mathematics is not the law." — Tim May (CoinDesk, 2018) #mathematics #law #cryptography #philosophy

"Remember, there are a lot tyrants out there." — Tim May (CoinDesk, 2018) #tyranny #warning #freedom

"Digital cash, untraceable and anonymous (like real cash), is also coming, though various technical and practical hurdles remain." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994) #digitalcash #anonymity #privacy

"Cash is also pretty good for privacy because there's no camera that can capture every movement of a dollar bill every time it moves; it just wouldn't work." — Peter Valkenburgh (Your Secret Right to Cash, 2017) #cash #privacy #surveillance #technology

"You can't awaken someone who's pretending to be asleep." — Edward Snowden (Joe Rogan Experience, 2019)

"Bulk collection, which should become one of the dirtiest phrases in the language if we have any kind of decency." — Edward Snowden (Joe Rogan Experience, 2019) #surveillance #masssurveillance

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." — John Gilmore (Time Magazine, 1993) #censorship #internet #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

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

"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