This is much of the privacy philosphy behind BTC
by Eric Hughes
Cypherpunk's ManifestoPrivacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age.Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn'twant the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something onedoesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectivelyreveal oneself to the world.
If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory oftheir interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory ofthis; how could anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it,but the freedom of speech, even more than privacy, is fundamental toan open society; we seek not to restrict any speech at all. If manyparties speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all theothers and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and otherparties. The power of electronic communications has enabled suchgroup speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want itto.
Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to atransaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessaryfor that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, wemust ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most casespersonal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at astore and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages,my provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am sayingor what others are saying to me; my provider only need know how toget the message there and how much I owe them in fees. When myidentity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction,I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I mustalways reveal myself.
Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transactionsystems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. Ananonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. Ananonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity whendesired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy.
Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I saysomething, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have noprivacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and toencrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire forprivacy. Furthermore, to reveal one's identity with assurance whenthe default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.
We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, facelessorganizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is totheir advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they willspeak. To try to prevent their speech is to fight against therealities of information. Information does not just want to be free,it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the availablestorage space. Information is Rumor's younger, stronger cousin;Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, andunderstands less than Rumor.
We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We mustcome together and create systems which allow anonymous transactionsto take place. People have been defending their own privacy forcenturies with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secrethandshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allowfor strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.
We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. Weare defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mailforwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronicmoney.
Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write softwareto 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 fellowCypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for allto use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of thesoftware we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and thata widely dispersed system can't be shut down.
Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption isfundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removesinformation from the public realm. Even laws against cryptographyreach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence.Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and withit the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible.
For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract.People must come and together deploy these systems for the commongood. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one'sfellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek your questions and yourconcerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not deceiveourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course becausesome may disagree with our goals.
The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer forprivacy. Let us proceed together apace.
Onward.
Eric Hughes<[email protected]>
9 March 1993
