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1 Motivation:
2 ///////////
4 First, let me introduce you an important manifest formulated by Eric Hughes (in
5 case you already know it, scroll down for further explanations):
7 Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not
8 secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know,
9 but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is
10 the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.
12 If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their
13 interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory of this; how could
14 anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it, but the freedom of speech,
15 even more than privacy, is fundamental to an open society; we seek not to
16 restrict any speech at all. If many parties speak together in the same forum,
17 each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about
18 individuals and other parties. The power of electronic communications has
19 enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might
20 want it to.
22 Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have
23 knowledge only of that which is directly necessary for that transaction. Since
24 any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as
25 possible. In most cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a
26 magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I
27 am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my
28 provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others
29 are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message there and
30 how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed by the underlying
31 mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively
32 reveal myself; I must always reveal myself.
34 Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems.
35 Until now, cash has been the primary such system. An anonymous transaction
36 system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system empowers
37 individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this
38 is the essence of privacy.
40 Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I
41 want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech
42 is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the
43 desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not
44 too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one's identity with
45 assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.
47 We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless
48 organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their
49 advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak. To try to
50 prevent their speech is to fight against the realities of information.
51 Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Information
52 expands to fill the available storage space. Information is Rumor's younger,
53 stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more,
54 and understands less than Rumor.
56 We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together
57 and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have
58 been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness,
59 envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of
60 the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.
62 We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending
63 our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with
64 digital signatures, and with electronic money.
66 Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend
67 privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write
68 it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play
69 with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you
70 don't approve of the software we write. We know that software can't be
71 destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.
73 Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally
74 a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the
75 public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation's
76 border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will ineluctably spread over
77 the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes
78 possible.
80 For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must
81 come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends
82 so far as the cooperation of one's fellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek
83 your questions and your concerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not
84 deceive ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because
85 some may disagree with our goals.
87 The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy.
88 Let us proceed together apace.
90 Onward.
92 Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>, 9 March 1993
94 That said, why is it important to have such a networking toolkit?
96 Since only curvetun was created to offer security for your communications, the
97 rest is not. However, we believe that it is equally important to have a Swiss
98 army knife of network debugging, development or audit tools in order to stress
99 test developed privacy- and networking-related applications such as Tor,
100 Bitcoin and the like, but also the underlying operating system kernel or
101 routing and other security applications. With the netsniff-ng toolkit we aim to
102 fill such a gap.