From a cypherpunks gathering in 1993 [9] The people in this room hope for a world where an individual's informational footprints -- everything from an opinion on abortion to the medical record of an actual abortion -- can be traced only if the individual involved chooses to reveal them; a world where coherent messages shoot around the globe by network and microwave, but intruders and feds trying to pluck them out of the vapor find only gibberish; a world where the tools of prying are transformed into the instruments of privacy. There is only one way this vision will materialize, and that is by widespread use of cryptography. Is this technologically possible? Definitely. The obstacles are political -- some of the most powerful forces in government are devoted to the control of these tools. In short, there is a war going on between those who would liberate crypto and those who would suppress it. The seemingly innocuous bunch strewn around this conference room represents the vanguard of the pro-crypto forces. Though the battleground seems remote, the stakes are not: The outcome of this struggle may determine the amount of freedom our society will grant us in the 21st century. To the Cypherpunks, freedom is an issue worth some risk. I'm going to start where I think the beginning is, which is back with the Cypherpunk [1] mailinglist of the 80s, 90s. Julian Assange frequented the list in the late 90s [2]. The authors of Tor [3] and other anonymity systems, some of which wikileaks depends on (as well as Iranian and other dissidents whose lives depend on them), frequently debated and worked on their ideas in this forum. As well as cryptographers, scientists and some of the founders of the largest technological companies of our day. It was a forum of debate for how cryptography and technology would be used, abused and could change society. And while "cryptography" sounds too scientific to be at the pinnacle of freedom or revolutions, today, around 25 years after the cypherpunks mailing list was founded, we are starting to see that it is definitively intertwined with both freedom and revolution. See in the 80s and 90s cryptography was considered a weapon by the US Gov and they tried to restrict its export to anywhere but Canada. This was absurd because it assumed that only American scientists knew how to build strong cryptographic systems and also because enforcing such a law was impossible. The truth was that the US depended on cryptographic systems developed by European scientists, among others, as much as they did their own. Cypherpunks knew this and many of them were, after all, the same minds that created these systems. They took to printing the algorithms in books and t-shirts, which could not be classified as weapons whose export could be restricted. By the 90s the Gov too realized these restrictions were baseless and immensely counter productive to their own security and removed the export controls. This and many other defiant moments by cypherpunks might relate to Kleist's story of Kohlhaas but its where they differ that is much more telling. Kohlhaas was driven to defiance due to the injustice and absurdity he saw. In the story the social and legal structure of the society was perceived by Kohlhaas as fare and just. When it was abused he was forced to break the law to uphold justice. But for technologists, cypherpunks, hackers, the most successful examples of defiance against injustice have been completely within the bounds of the law because their actions involved innovation in the fringe of human intuition. This fringe is a realm that takes time to understand before legal structures can be adapted to create influence over it and bring order. Put simply the "intuition fringe" I am speaking of is a moving target for the law but the natural breeding ground for innovation. Consider the short history of sharing and downloading music. When Napster arrived it took time before the company was eventually shut down. By then technology and human intuition had evolved with it to the point that it did not matter. New systems were developed that decentralized responsibility (such as bittorrent) and today though Sony or Virgin Records will send thousands of 900eu fines per day to kids found to be downloading music it will have absolutely no effect on how common place this act will continue to be. Our collective intuition had already evolved. So too have business models evolved with it to turn this intuition into a benefit and not a harm but that latter point is not the focus of this article. Likewise, Wikileaks is itself just the Napster of its field ("making governments more transparent"). The people that want those involved arrested or killed lack the foresight to see that there are many more stages of evolution here. They also fail to see that it is in the inbalance of their reaction that is actually pushing the stages of this evolution further and faster. Openleaks [4] is a slightly less centralized system which is another step. And we have not even gotten close to understanding what the bittorent equivalent will be. Perhaps a distributed system where both the source and handler are protected or given plausible deniability in absolute terms through technological advancement. Or consider the recent "Anonymous" group and the form of "leaks" and the "incentivising transparency for governments" that they appear to be cultivating on this fringe. Their idea is "why should we wait for a socially conscious individual to leak evidence of corruption. Lets just hack into those systems and leak it ourselves". Which is exactly what they did in exposing HBGary's plans [5] to blackmail pro-wikileaks journalists on behalf of Bank of America (another Wikileaks victim) and the Chamber of Commerce. There is a comical irony when you look at how and why "Anonymous" (or this version of that group) started. When Mastercard, Visa, Paypal and Amazon refused to continue to provide services to Wikileaks, without any request from a legal entity showing there was grounds to refuse service; people got together, with no relation to the Wikileaks organization, and anonymously (hiding themselves using anonymizing technology) decided to take down the websites of all those systems as a response. Even more ironic is that the actions of these companies will likely bring greater support and development to another subversive invention thought of in the early years on the cypherpunk list: anonymous currency. Jim Bells Assassination Politics [6] was an idea he developed on the mailing list that eventually put him in jail, where he remains to this day. Not for the idea, but for tax evasion. The idea was "using digital signatures through email to create an assassination market, 'predicting' the deaths of government employees. In effect, the idea would create an incentive for assassination of corrupt government officials". The idea was logically possible but the technology of that day did not support it. 15 years later the idea of anonymous currency is actually coming into existence in the form of BitCoin [7]. You can already use it today and AnonyNews, a news site and forum loosely related to "Anonymous" accept donations via BitCoin [8]. In addition to providing a completely anonymous way to purchase goods or exchange currency BitCoin was also developed in a way that mathematically no government or organization can control the value of its worth, which is massively more subversive/progressive to what we have in modern economics today. In conclusion, lets contemplate what could have stopped Kohlhaas, the development of Wikileaks, the development of BitCoin and the advent of "Anonymous". In this Kleists tale and the technology all share the same answer: an astute care taker of justice that fights to retain the trust of the people. Because it is when that was lost that all of the above came into being. And even if todays care takers decide to pursue means to stop further evolution on the fridges of human intuition: today we see revolutions can start in 140 characters or less, and cypherpunks have proven they can still collaborate and communicate if forced to print their algorithms on paper or t-shirts. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk 2: http://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks@minder.net/msg18203.html http://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=cypherpunks@minder.net&q=from:%22Julian+Assange%22 3: http://torproject.org 4: http://openleaks.org 5: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/11/campaigns 6: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Jim_Bell#.22Assassination_Politics.22_essay 7: http://bitcoin.org 8: http://anonnews.org/bitcoin.html 9: https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/CALEA/crypto_rebels.article