88 lines
5.0 KiB
Plaintext
88 lines
5.0 KiB
Plaintext
Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not
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secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to
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know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to
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know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.
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If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their
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interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory of this; how could
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anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it, but the freedom of speech,
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even more than privacy, is fundamental to an open society; we seek not to
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restrict any speech at all. If many parties speak together in the same forum,
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each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about
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individuals and other parties. The power of electronic communications has
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enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want
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it to.
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Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have
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knowledge only of that which is directly necessary for that transaction. Since
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any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as
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possible. In most cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a
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magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I
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am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my
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provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others
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are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message there and
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how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed by the underlying
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mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively
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reveal myself; I must always reveal myself.
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Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction
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systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. An anonymous
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transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system
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empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when
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desired; this is the essence of privacy.
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Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I
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want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech
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is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the
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desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not
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too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one's identity with
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assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.
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We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless
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organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their
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advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak. To try to
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prevent their speech is to fight against the realities of
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information. Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be
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free. Information expands to fill the available storage space. Information is
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Rumor's younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more
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eyes, knows more, and understands less than Rumor.
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We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together
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and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People
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have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness,
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envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of
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the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.
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We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are
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defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding
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systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.
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Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend
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privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write
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it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play
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with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you
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don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be
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destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.
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Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is
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fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes
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information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so
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far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will
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ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions
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systems that it makes possible.
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For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must
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come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only
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extends so far as the cooperation of one's fellows in society. We the
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Cypherpunks seek your questions and your concerns and hope we may engage you so
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that we do not deceive ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our
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course because some may disagree with our goals.
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The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for
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privacy. Let us proceed together apace.
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Onward.
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Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>
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9 March 1993
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