"I have argued that the Internet should have had security built into it from the very beginning, where every email message was authenticated with a signature, and that there was an adequate public key infrastructure in place." — Martin Hellman (Charles Babbage Institute Oral History, 2004) #internet #security #email #publickey

"If everyone's every action were being monitored, and everyone technically violates some obscure law at some time, then punishment becomes purely selective. Those in power will essentially have what they need to punish anyone they'd like, whenever they choose, as if there were no rules at all." — Moxie Marlinspike (We Should All Have Something To Hide, 2013) #surveillance #selectiveenforcement #power #law

"Even more than monetary gain, personal data bestows power on those who collect and analyse it, and that is what makes it so coveted." — Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019) #data #power #surveillance #privacy

"I even question Mike's point about the government's inability to ban books. Look at the difficulty in keeping PGP available in this country even though it is legal. Not only have FTP sites been steadily closed down, even the key servers have as well." — Hal Finney (Politics vs Technology, 1994) #government #censorship #politics #pgp

"Cryptography was a technique that did not require your trusting other people." — Whitfield Diffie (ITAS Interview, 1992) #cryptography #trust #privacy

"Every action I took was out of a desire to enable people to have freedom and control over their own lives." — Ross Ulbricht (Letter to Judge Forrest, 2015) #freedom #autonomy

"Somebody had to be the first one to start banging on the Berlin Wall, with a sledgehammer, in 1989. Somebody had to be the first to walk through. Somebody had to be the first to stand up and say, 'Enough!'" — Jim Bell (Assassination Politics, 1997) #resistance #freedom

"End-to-end encryption should be the default for all communication." — Moxie Marlinspike (Signal blog, 2016) #encryption #privacy

"If you encrypted your files, then if a court wanted your files they would have to come and threaten you and you would have the control to make the choice as to whether you would surrender your files or not." — Whitfield Diffie (ITAS Interview, 1992) #encryption #privacy

"The supply of leaks is very large. It's helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It's protective to us." — Julian Assange (Forbes, 2010) #whistleblowing #transparency #leaks