Of Cypherpunks and Sousveillance

Abstract

For three decades, the cypherpunk movement has fought for the right of individuals and publics to use digital cryptography—or crypto—to defend their individual privacy and promote institutional transparency and accountability. The cypherpunks have also fought for institutional transparency through various strategies of sousveillance. Yet the movement’s contribution to theories of surveillance and the praxis of resistance have been largely overlooked by scholars. This essay bridges the gap between the movement and the academy by outlining the normative and epistemological aspects of cypherpunk philosophy. Cypherpunk ethics is captured by the normative cypherpunk slogan “privacy for the weak, transparency for the powerful.” Cypherpunk epistemology is a form of data activism that calls for a hands-on response to the datafication of surveillance and relies upon both pro-active (transparency) and ­re-active (privacy) strategies. While the cypherpunks are famously concerned about privacy, because cypherpunk philosophy also calls for “transparency for the powerful,” cypherpunks have practiced a distinctive form of cypherpunk sousveillance. By understanding that cypherpunk theory and practice each consist of two complementary dynamics—privacy/transparency, pro-active/re-active—it becomes possible to understand that the cypherpunk movement provides the basis for activists and citizens to resist large surveillance institutions like the National Security Agency and Google by altering information fluxes at the systemic level. The cypherpunk movement provides an intelligible, viable, and effective model of data activism and strategic agency, and this essay contributes to the pluralistic, multidisciplinary understanding of resistance to surveillance and practice of sousveillance by outlining the basic normative, epistemic, and pragmatic aspects of cypherpunk theory and practice.