"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 we had a mapping which took the fixed digicash bits onto the interesting parts of the fractal, then fake cash would not produce pretty pictures, while real cash would produce some part of a beautiful fractal. Again, you would have validation and beauty being tied together." — Hal Finney (The Beauty of ECash, 1994) #digitalcash #cryptography

"I don't want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under." — Edward Snowden (The Guardian Interview, 2013) #surveillance #privacy #freedom

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

"The law enforcement folks were stuck longer in the hard-core phase, and still are, even now using Bin Laden to suggest that crypto has GONE TOO FAR, damn it." — Steven Levy (The WELL - Crypto Discussion, 2001) #lawenforcement #cryptography #government #terrorism

"Most people are unaware of how visible email is. Email could be intercepted by a lot of parties along the way, it could be captured and logged, scanned and then used years later." — Philip Zimmermann (GrepLaw, 2003) #email #surveillance #privacy #interception

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

"Using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous 'digital cash,' it would be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given." — Jim Bell (Assassination Politics, 1997) #encryption #digitalcash #anonymity #privacy

"Power over others' privacy is the quintessential kind of power in the digital age" — Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019) #privacy #power #digitalage #surveillance

"Privacy gives each of us more control over his own life—which on average, if not in every case, is likely to lead to a freer world." — David D. Friedman (The Case for Privacy, 2005) #privacy #freedom

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

"If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy." — Philip Zimmermann (Why I Wrote PGP, 1991) #privacy #encryption #law

"In view of the serious implications of such a law, I abandoned my plans to charge for PGP in the hopes of achieving wider distribution." — Philip Zimmermann (GrepLaw, 2003) #pgp #encryption #government #backdoors

"Somebody had to be the first one to start banging on the Berlin Wall, with a sledgehammer, in 1989. Somebody had to be the first to walk through. Somebody had to be the first to stand up and say, 'Enough!'" — Jim Bell (Assassination Politics, 1997) #resistance #freedom

"Cryptography rearranges power: it configures who can do what, from what. This makes cryptography an inherently political tool, and it confers on the field an intrinsically moral dimension." — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #cryptography #politics

"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

"But there is another solution, one advocated forcefully by computer scientist David Chaum. Rather than relying on new laws and more government, Chaum looks to technical solutions. And these solutions rely on the ancient science devoted to keeping information confidential: cryptography." — Hal Finney (Protecting privacy with electronic cash, 1993) #cryptography #privacy #government

"What is the greatest unsolved problem in cryptography today? Lack of user awareness." — Martin Hellman (Charles Babbage Institute Oral History, 2004) #cryptography

"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