A Cypherpunk's Manifesto | Satoshi Nakamoto Institute

Eric Hughes's "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto" argues that privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age and that it requires anonymous transaction systems and cryptography. The text distinguishes privacy from secrecy, describing privacy as the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world. It holds that governments and corporations will not grant privacy voluntarily, so individuals must build the systems themselves. Cypherpunks, as the text describes them, write and publish free code, including cryptography, anonymous mail forwarding, digital signatures and electronic money, and the text says cryptography will inevitably spread across the globe.