Eric Hughes · 9 March 1993

A Cypherpunk's Manifesto

A compact argument for building digital systems that let people decide what they reveal, to whom, and when.

Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age.
Eric Hughes, A Cypherpunk's Manifesto

Privacy is choice, not secrecy

Hughes separates privacy from secrecy. Secrecy hides the existence of information; privacy gives a person the power to disclose themselves selectively. A private transaction should reveal only what the other party needs to complete it, rather than making identity the default price of participation.
Private systems require cryptography

Good intentions, policy, and institutional restraint cannot provide that control on their own. Encryption limits who can read a message, while digital signatures let someone prove a statement or identity when they choose. Anonymous transaction systems extend the same principle to exchange: disclosure stays optional instead of becoming infrastructure.
Electronic money belongs in the design

The manifesto treats private communication and private exchange as one problem. Cash historically allowed transactions without permanent identity records; digital networks need electronic money and protocols that preserve the same ability to transact without unnecessary surveillance.
Privacy must be built

The practical conclusion is responsibility. Privacy technology becomes useful only when people write it, publish it, test it, and deploy it widely enough for others to participate. The cypherpunk position is therefore active rather than hopeful: build systems whose structure protects privacy instead of asking powerful institutions to grant it.