Eric Hughes

Craig Jarvis’s paper in the journal Internet Histories states that he worked for David ChaumDavid ChaumDavid Chaum is a cryptographer who introduced mix networks, blind signatures and the electronic cash system eCash, initiated the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) and founded DigiCash in Amsterdam; he later developed voter-verifiable voting systems and leads the blockchain project xx network.Open the full entry in Amsterdam; the paper describes David Chaum as considered the father of cryptocurrencies.⁠[1]

The Internet Policy Review entry “Cypherpunk” states that in 1992 Timothy C. MayTimothy C. MayTimothy C. May (1951–2018) was a physicist and writer who, while at Intel, identified alpha particles as the cause of soft errors in dynamic memory chips; he wrote “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto” in 1988, co-founded the Cypherpunks mailing list with Eric Hughes and others in 1992, and wrote “The Cyphernomicon,” a document in FAQ form.Open the full entry and he gathered a group of cryptographers, mathematicians, engineers and hackers to discuss how encrypted communication systems could overcome state surveillance.⁠[2]

Elon University’s Imagining the Internet project states that he co-founded the Cypherpunks with John GilmoreJohn GilmoreJohn Gilmore is an American programmer, entrepreneur and civil libertarian, an early employee of Sun Microsystems and a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cygnus Support and the Cypherpunks; in 1998 he led EFF’s construction of the DES Cracker, which broke DES encryption.Open the full entry and Timothy C. May; Craig Jarvis’s paper calls him a “Cypherpunk co-founder.”⁠[3][1]

He and Timothy C. May compiled the “Crypto Glossary,” dated September 1992; it was handed out in printed form at the first Cypherpunks meeting in September 1992, and May posted it to the Cypherpunks mailing list on November 22, 1992. The glossary defines terms such as digital cash, digital pseudonyms, David Chaum’s DC-nets and mixes, and the one-time pad.⁠[4]

Accounts of the group’s name differ. A 2018 Reason article states that the name “Cypherpunks” was coined by his girlfriend as a play on the “cyberpunk” genre of fiction. The Internet Policy Review entry, giving Steven LevySteven LevySteven Levy is an American technology journalist and author, editor at large at Wired, who has written about the digital revolution and the people behind it for almost four decades; his books include Hackers, Crypto and In the Plex.Open the full entry’s 2001 book as its source, states that Jude Milhon, influenced by authors such as Neal StephensonNeal StephensonNeal Stephenson is an American author of science fiction and historical fiction whose best-known works include Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle. He coined the term “metaverse” in Snow Crash (1992), and his novels are known for their detailed imagining of technology and the information society, influencing generations of technologists; he also took part in the early work of Blue Origin, served as Magic Leap’s chief futurist and co-founded the blockchain platform Lamina1.Open the full entry and William Gibson, called them “cypherpunks” as a play on the word “cipher,” the central code of an encryption system.⁠[5][2]

The 2018 Reason article states that in September 1992 Timothy C. May and two friends, Hughes and Hugh Daniel, came up with the idea of setting up an online mailing list to discuss their ideas; within a few days of its launch about a hundred people had signed up, and by 1997 it averaged 30 messages a day with about 2,000 subscribers.⁠[5]

The Internet Policy Review entry states that in the 1990s the mailing list was a forum-like discussion space with nearly a thousand people, whose members ranged from anarcho-capitalists to socialists and from lawyers and political scientists to developers and cryptographers, and who shared strategies against regulatory limits on the domestic use and export of encryption products and against the major national surveillance programs of that decade that threatened the secrecy of communications. A 2012 article on the Institute of Network Cultures’ Unlike Us site calls him the founder of the Cypherpunk mailing list, known for its pro-crypto and privacy discussions in the 1990s.⁠[2][6]

The Internet Policy Review entry holds that the reading of PGP as a “cypherpunk technology” extends to other decentralised technologies, such as BitcoinBitcoinBitcoin (common symbol BTC) is an open peer-to-peer electronic cash protocol, network, and native digital asset. Full nodes independently verify transactions and blocks according to the consensus rules; transactions are recorded as UTXOs, and blocks are organized into a public ledger through proof of work. Bitcoin is not issued or managed by any single institution, but using, holding in custody, and trading it still involve key, privacy, market, and legal risks.Open the full entry, conceived in 2008.⁠[2]

On September 25, 1992 he announced on the list that the “hopping remailer” was done: a Perl script reads a “Request-Remailing-To:” header, forwards the message to that address through sendmail and rewrites the header, and a line containing only “##” tells the script to append what follows directly to the rewritten header, so that new header lines can be added at each hop. He sent himself a three-hop test message, received the original letter and three remailed copies, and wrote that the process could be extended up to a practical mail-size limit of about 50K. He noted that the system was not secure on its own: if each message body were encrypted and decrypted before the header rewrite, the full routing instructions would be hidden from observers, which he called his next project.⁠[7]

On October 13, 1992 a list member signing as “Hal” announced a new remailer, saying he had been experimenting with Eric’s remailing software on the Sun 4 he used at work; the software had gone through three revisions as Eric added features, and he implemented them in the same order, first the basic remailer and then the “##” and “::” header-management support, before adding automatic message decryption with PGP. He also described a double-remailing method in which a message passes first through Eric’s remailer and then, encrypted, through Hal’s own, to keep any one remailer from knowing who is talking to whom.⁠[8]

Elon University’s Imagining the Internet project records his “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto,” dated March 9, 1993, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation given as the place of publication. The paragraph it excerpts says that encryption is a private act that removes information from the public sphere and that laws against it reach only as far as a nation’s border; that “Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe,” bringing anonymous transaction systems with it; and that widespread privacy requires a social contract in which people deploy these systems together for the common good. The paragraph ends: “Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one’s fellows in society.”⁠[3]

The 2012 article on the Institute of Network Cultures’ Unlike Us site quotes from the manifesto the sentence “Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age” and the passage defining privacy as “the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.”⁠[6]

The Internet Policy Review entry calls the manifesto “iconic” and quotes its statements that cypherpunks “write code,” “deplore regulations on cryptography” and “are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy”; Craig Jarvis’s paper holds that the cypherpunks’ philosophy of direct action is articulated in the manifesto.⁠[2][1]

The 2018 Reason article states that Timothy C. May, he and the free-speech activist John Gilmore wore masks on the cover of the second issue of Wired, accompanying a profile by the journalist Steven Levy.⁠[5]

Elon University’s Imagining the Internet project records his words from the Wired article “Crypto Rebels,” dated May 1, 1993: “Cypherpunks write code.” They know, he said, that someone has to write code to defend privacy, and since it is their privacy, they are going to write it; “Cypherpunks don’t care if you don’t like the software they write”; “Cypherpunks know that software can’t be destroyed”; “Cypherpunks know that a widely dispersed system can’t be shut down”; “Cypherpunks will make the networks safe for privacy.”⁠[9]

On May 6, 1993 he posted to the Cypherpunks mailing list under the subject “PRESS: Markoff/NYTimes : "Big Brother & the Computer Age",” saying that John MarkoffJohn MarkoffJohn Markoff is an American technology journalist and author who long covered Silicon Valley and the information technology industry for The New York Times and now conducts research at Stanford University.Open the full entry’s article in that day’s New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American morning daily newspaper published in New York City. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company.Open the full entry quoted him: he had given Markoff the quotation three weeks earlier, when the story first broke, and was surprised to see it in that day’s article; on the afternoon of the announcement he had called Markoff, whose office was in San Francisco, “across the bay,” to give him an opportunity to quote him. He wrote that the Freedom of Information Act disclosures about NSA’s involvement in NIST were the hook but not the point of the story, and that those facts were at the back of it. He wrote that newspaper articles usually do not get written unless something has changed, something “new”; an ongoing situation gets no coverage until something specific happens, which can be an event made just for the press, such as a press conference, a press release, a public statement or a publication. He encouraged list members to contact their local media and offer to explain the subject to them, writing that reporters have little time to learn about what they cover and that presenting oneself as a bona fide expert and offering to tutor them improves the coverage.⁠[10]

The November 17, 2012 article on the Institute of Network Cultures’ Unlike Us site states that Amsterdam’s first CryptoParty, a gathering to teach the public how to use encryption tools, took place on September 27 and that he took part remotely by Skype; Jurre van Bergen of Amsterdam’s hackerspace was one of the organizers, the CryptoParty website displayed his manifesto, and the first crowd included journalists.⁠[6]

Craig Jarvis’s paper cites his view that anonymity in cyberspace was meant to create immunity from physical threats. The paper also quotes his list post of October 8, 1993: “Many of us have been influenced by the fiction of Vernor Vinge, particularly his ‘True Names’”; its references include his announcement of February 9, 1994 of a February meeting on the theme “True Names.”⁠[1]

Elon University’s Imagining the Internet project also records his statements “We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any” and “We know that software can’t be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can’t be shut down” (1993), and “You could join a collective to purchase some information and decrease your actual cost by orders of magnitude,” “How large can the flow of money on the nets get before the government requires reporting of every small transaction?” and “It might also be the case that anonymous money will be the only kind of money” (1994).⁠[11]