(no subject)

"The cypherpunk ethos allowed me to think about how best to oppose the efforts of oppressive bodies -- governments, corporations, surveillance agencies -- to extract data from vulnerable individuals. Regimes often rely on having control of the data, and they can hurt people or oppress them or silence them by means of such control. My sense of the cyperpunk ethos was that it could protect people against this: it could turn their knowledge into an unreachable possession of theirs, protecting them in the classic Tom Paine way of securing liberty as a bulwark against harm or aggression. We aimed to turn the tools of oppression into the instruments of liberty and that was a straightforward goal."

- Julian Assange: The Unauthorized Autobiography, p79