Given the success of the previous article on Cypherpunks, which in some ways we could consider our "Avi", this time I want to talk to you about the thinking of these ordinary people, like us, who care about privacy through encryption.
Model
In order to understand the philosophy well, we must take a journey through time, to the rhythm of the famous Ramones Punk Rock group (hey ho let’s go!) From the mid-70s.
Do you remember those beautiful crests on the heads of the guys who wore black leather jackets?
Yes, we must refer to the social movement born in the United States in the early seventies: Punk.
This social movement, through its crude and direct music, any form of control by governments through the mass media. Clearly, depending on the area and the various periods it took on various facets: from anarchy (the famous piece by Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK) to communism, in some even any political ideology was rejected.
As will immediately catch the eye the same philosophy of the Punks have taken up the Cypherpunk: in both social movements the common denominator is the rejection of control by any form of power.
In this case the Cypherpunks want to protect their (our) privacy, not for fraudulent acts, for the simple fact of being able to manage their identity as appropriate.
To understand how to manage one's identity, let's analyze Hugens' “Cypherpunk manifesto”.
This document reports in a few lines the whole essence of the Cypherpunk philosophy, through a simple example:
When we go to buy a magazine, the newsagent does not need to know our name, they just need to know that I can pay them the money for the cost of the magazine.
By the same principle, the Cypherpunks want to maintain relationships with the outside world, in this case digital.
Such as?
Based on a fundamental principle: Private does not mean secret.
My identity is private and I have to be able to reveal it to whoever I want, while nobody has to know a secret thing: just me.
Privacy understood in the true sense of the word, the Cypherpunks consider it selective, that is, such that I (and no one else) can make public those data that I consider necessary my interlocutor should know.
Encryption in the service of Privacy.
In order to acquire the necessary privacy, on an IT level, the data must be encrypted so that they cannot be intercepted and read by the people to whom they are not addressed; this task is accomplished by cryptography.
Note that Hughes attaches proportional importance to encryption: the more the data is encrypted by a complex cryptographic algorithm, the more we care about our privacy!
The Cypherpunks, to guarantee privacy to those who ask for it, write free and free software to be able to encrypt their information. This is because only if each of us is in possession of the cryptographic software are we sure we can reveal our identity to whoever we deem appropriate.
This introduces the principle of decentralization: large companies and organizations, which are in possession of much, if not all of our information, guarantee privacy at their discretion.
They decide when and to whom to provide our information; in doing so, we are not the first person to manage our data, more or less sensitive.
So the system can be defined as centralized.
Another aspect that characterizes the Cypherpunks is the truth, in some cases this propensity for truth leads to a rather pronounced extremism; in this regard, we can mention Juljan Assange's Wikileaks site.
This site collects thousands and thousands of documents where you can read uncomfortable truths on a variety of topics or events.
