Crypto-anarchy

Crypto-Anarchism is a political philosophy that expounds the use of strong public key cryptography to enforce privacy and therefore individual freedom. Cryptoanarchists aim to create encrypted virtual communities where everyone is absolutely anonymous or pseudonymous.

In such virtual communities the psysical identities of the pseudonyms are totally untraceable. Cryptoanarchists believe that inside their communities is the only place where you can be totally free, because in all other communities there will always be someone that will listen at what you say and know who you are. Privacy is to reveal one's self selectively and unless you cannot do that as you wish, you have no privacy. Inside the crypto-societies, it is impossible to know the physical identities of whom you are talking to unless the speaker wants to reveal hirself or eavesdrop into others private conversations.

Untraceable electronic money is being delevoped for these virtual communities that can be used to buy and/or sell anything anonymously. Untraceable money would make it possible to ignore some of the laws of the physical world. For instance, tax on income for online services provided pseudonymously can be avoided if no government knows the identity of the service provider. Of course, such freedom could be abused by criminals. But cryptoanarchs claim that those people are already communicating pretty much anonymously - the cryptosocieties will just bring the freedom of anonymity to the ordinary people. It is, however, illegal to use strong cryptography in some countries, such as France. To enforce a ban on the use of cryptography, however, is probably impossible, as cryptography itself can be used to hide the existence of encrypted messages (see steganography).

[This should not be confused with the use of the prefix 'crypto-' to indicate an ideology or system with an intentionally concealed or obfuscated "true nature". For example, some would use the term "crypto-fascist" to describe an individual or organization that holds fascist views and subscribes to fascist doctorine but tries to hide this agenda from those outside of itself.]

External Links

http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/articles/crypto/cypherpunks/cyphernomicon/CP-FAQ - The Cyphernomicon by Timothy C. May ("Cypherpunks FAQ and More" from 1994! Need serious updating but still excellent.)
Invisible Net