Introduction
The cypherpunks were a group of privacy activists who in the 1990s helped establish the use of unregulated digital cryptography within the United States. Digital privacy, better phrased as privacy in the digital age given the inexorable digital-physical convergence, is achieved principally via digital security. When considering the base elements of digital security, Professor Keith Martin comments that, “cryptography is pretty much the only game in town” (Martin, 2020, p. 2). Cryptography allows not only for a host of vital applications within our everyday lives, such as secure financial transactions, but also for capabilities the cypherpunks hoped would undermine the State (May, 1988). Such encryption-dependent technologies include: block-chains, which can place financial transactions beyond the government’s ability to monitor and tax; whistleblowing platforms, capable of facilitating leaks whilst protecting the whistleblower; and anonymity networks, which can obfuscate a citizen’s physical location.
The cypherpunks helped shape our Internet. Beltramini comments they were, “perhaps the single most effective grassroots organization in history dedicated to protecting freedom in cyberspace” (Beltramini, 2020, p. 1). However, Dahlberg argues that cyber-libertarian visions of the future, such as those held by the cypherpunks, had mostly dissipated by 2000, he comments that by then the Internet was, “seen as part and parcel of “everyday life” – simply an extension of existing social systems, rather than being a revolutionary medium transcending offline political and economic constraints” (2010, p. 333). However, Dahlberg’s assessment fails to account for the significant 1990s cryptographic advances made by the citizenry, which included weakening export controls, defeating the Clinton administration’s attempts to further regulate cryptography, and establishing the foundation for current technologies such as crypto-currencies. Today, law enforcement does not consider unregulated encryption as a tolerable status quo as its use hinders their access to suspect’s data.1 In 2020 alone, two bills were introduced in Congress which could outlaw encryption not containing a government access method (commonly referred to as a “back door”) (United States Congress, 2020; United States Senate, 2020). When the Clinton administration sought to include a back door within encryption technologies in the 1990s, the cypherpunks led the successful battle to defeat government policy, thus helping to establish unregulated cryptography. The cypherpunk ideology now influences a new generation of digital privacy activists.2 These new activists are responsible for challenging today’s government policies to mandate encryption back doors.
It is important we understand the community which last successfully challenged the State’s attempt to regulate cryptography so that ongoing debates are informed by an accurate characterization of those who established today’s status quo. This article builds on the cypherpunk studies of Rid (2016) and Beltramini (2020
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