Thirty-one years ago, the Cypherpunk Manifesto was published: history and principles of a movement that inspired the birth of Bitcoin.
It has now been 31 years since March 9, 1993, the day when Eric Hughes, an American mathematician, cryptographer, and programmer, published ‘A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto.’ The document outlines the fundamental principles of the cypherpunk movement, emphasizing the importance of anonymity and cryptography in the information age. The movement reaffirms its commitment to protecting individuals‘ privacy and personal freedom from governments and corporations.
The principles of the movement
Cypherpunks believe that technology, particularly cryptography, can be used to protect the privacy and individual freedom of people and to create a freer society.
The cypherpunk movement is based on some key principles:
- Freedom of speech and expression: cypherpunks believe that freedom of speech and expression are fundamental to a free society;
- Right to privacy: cypherpunks believe that privacy is a fundamental right and advocate that individuals should have control over their personal data;
- Free and open access to information: cypherpunks believe that information should be free and accessible to all.
“We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.
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. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it.”
The origins of the movement
The Cypherpunk movement is a group of activists that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s with a common interest in cryptography, privacy, and the protection of individual freedoms in the digital age.
During the last decade of the 20th century, the so-called “Crypto Wars” were fought, during which the United States government likened the spread of cryptography to the export of firearms. Through the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) enacted by Congress in 1976, the government made it illegal to distribute armaments to other countries without a license, including cryptography. In case of violation of the AECA, the penalty was up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to one million dollars. This move therefore prohibited the dissemination of cryptographic code, which was considered equivalent to transporting ammunition and armaments. In fact, until 1997, cryptographic code was legally considered a weapon by the US government.
Cypherpunks fought against these restrictions, arguing that cryptography was vital for individual freedom and security. They organized awareness campaigns, legal battles, and grassroots activism to counter government control. For example, a group of activists began printing small portions of cryptographic code on T-shirts.
The early roots of the cypherpunk movement originated from the studies of cryptographer David Chaum on topics such as anonymous digital money and pseudonymized reputation systems, described in the 1985 document “Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete”. In 1989, Chaum developed DigiCash, the first electronic payment system based on asymmetric cryptography and blind signatures.
In 1991, Phil Zimmermann invented Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), an easy-to-use email encryption program that allowed people to protect their email communications. That same year, researchers Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta published the paper “How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document”, demonstrating how to assert the existence of a specific document at a certain point in time.
Later, in 1992, with the publication of “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto”, Timothy C. May, an American political writer and engineer, laid the philosophical foundations of the movement. At the end of 1992, Eric Hughes, John Gilmore, and Timothy May formed a small group of computer enthusiasts, which later became known as the cypherpunk movement. The movement was born in response to growing concerns about government surveillance and the continued erosion of privacy in the digital age.
Comprising activists, hackers, programmers, cryptographers, and computer scientists, the movement initially communicated through mailing lists. Their ideals have inspired the birth of innovations such as WikiLeaks, BitTorrent, Tor, and Bitcoin.
