Michel Bauwens: Recommended Reading – Cypherpunks on Freedom and the Future of the Internet

Hardware, P2P / Panarchy, Software
Michel Bauwens
Michel Bauwens

Book of the Day: Cypherpunks on Freedom and the Future of the Internet

Excerpted from a review by Cryptome:

“This is a highly informative book, perhaps the best published on the substance of WikiLeaks, its technology, philosophy, origin and purpose, rooted in the Cypherpunks resistance to authority through encryption and anonymizing technology. The trenchant and salient, wide-ranging discussion among Assange, Appelbaum, Müller-Maguhn and Zimmermann, is derived from a four-part RT series with additional editorial material and a summarizing prologue by Assange, “A Call to Cryptographic Arms.”

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

It is an excellent introduction to the struggle for control of digital communications, economics and governance. A prime candidate for inclusion of reading lists of the enemies of authoritarian institutions, corporations and governments heavily invested in the Internet and aiming to control it by secret collusion for their purposes — at the global public’s expense, loss of privacy and reduced democracy. It claims to be a “watchman’s warning” against the threat posed by the Internet and cellphone technology.

The panel asserts [11 points in all]:

1. The internet is a threat to human civilization because of its panoptic surveillance and profiling of users.

2. “Strategic surveillance” gathers all online and cellphone data as distinguished from tactical surveillance with is specifically targeted.

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