"Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer.'" — Richard Stallman (GNU Project, 1985) #freesoftware #liberty #opensource

"WE STAND TODAY on the brink of a revolution in cryptography." — Whitfield Diffie and Martin E. Hellman (New Directions in Cryptography, 1976) #cryptography #revolution #privacy #publickey

"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

"You use envelopes for postal mail. You use it for love letters, business letters and your medical records. The only way to create the digital equivalent of an envelope is to encrypt." — Philip Zimmermann (GrepLaw, 2003) #encryption #privacy #email #envelopes

"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

"If you encrypted your files, then if a court wanted your files they would have to come and threaten you and you would have the control to make the choice as to whether you would surrender your files or not." — Whitfield Diffie (ITAS Interview, 1992) #encryption #privacy

"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

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

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

"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

"If you see a proposal for an electronic money system, check to see whether it has the ability to preserve the privacy of financial transactions the way paper money does today. If not, realize that the proposal is designed to harm, not help, individual privacy." — Hal Finney (Protecting privacy with electronic cash, 1993) #digitalcash #privacy #warning

"They're abridging the freedom and privacy of all citizens—to defend us against a bogeyman that they will not explain. The decision to literally trade away our privacy is one that must be made by the whole society, not made unilaterally by a military spy agency." — John Gilmore (Crypto Rebels (WIRED), 1993) #privacy #freedom #government #nsa #democracy

"The best defense against abusive government is an informed and active citizenry." — Whitfield Diffie (Congressional testimony, 1993) #government #defense

"Cryptography can make possible a world in which people have control over information about themselves, not because government has granted them that control, but because only they possess the cryptographic keys to reveal that information. This is the world we are working to create." — Hal Finney (Protecting privacy with electronic cash, 1993) #cryptography #privacy #government

"Cryptography was a technique that did not require your trusting other people." — Whitfield Diffie (ITAS Interview, 1992) #cryptography #trust #privacy

"The supply of leaks is very large. It's helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It's protective to us." — Julian Assange (Forbes, 2010) #whistleblowing #transparency #leaks

"Cash is more than a method of payment. It is a fundamental tool for individual privacy and autonomy, and it is necessary for an open society." — Jerry Brito (The Case for Electronic Cash, 2019) #cash #privacy #autonomy #opensociety

"Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior." — Julian Assange (Forbes, 2010) #intelligence #secrecy #law #government

"Being a patriot doesn't mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen, from the violations of and encroachments of adversaries." — Edward Snowden (Permanent Record, 2019) #patriotism #constitution #whistleblower

"Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it." — Eric Hughes (A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, 1993) #cypherpunk #code