2600 Magazine archive

Julian Assange, Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Müller-Maguhn, Jérémie Zimmermann - Cypherpunks_ freedom and the future of the Internet(2012) --- The Internet has led to revolutions across the world but a crackdown is now in full swing. As whole societies move online, mass surveillance programs are being deployed globally. Our civilization has reached a crossroads. In one direction lies a future promoting “privacy for the weak and transparency for the powerful”; in the other is an internet that transfers power over entire populations to an unaccountable complex of spy agencies and their trans- national corporate allies. Cypherpunks are activists who advocate the mass use of strong cryptography as a way protecting our basic freedoms against this onslaught. Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of and visionary behind WikiLeaks, has been a leading voice in the cypherpunk movement since the 1990s. Now, in a timely and important new book, Assange brings together a group of rebel thinkers and activists from the front line of the battle for cyberspace to dis cuss whether the internet will emancipate or enslave all of us.