John Gilmore

“If we don't have our own secret codes, we don't have our own private lives.”

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

“Secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power, its enabling force. Transparency is the only real antidote.”

“We're building a world where you can say what you believe and not get killed for it.”

“I want a guarantee that the government will not be able to secretly tap my phone. I don't want a guarantee that my phone will never be tapped. I want a guarantee that if it is tapped, I will know it, and there will be a public record of it.”

“My own feeling is that we've got to be really, really careful about making new kinds of things illegal. We have a tendency to think, 'That's a bad thing, let's pass a law against it.' But you can't pass a law against stupidity.”

“The government should not be in the business of telling people what they can and cannot read, or what they can and cannot say.”

“What we're looking for is a way to have the same amount of freedom on the Internet that we have in the real world.”

“Is it a federal crime to lie to a computer?”

“We're trying to build a world where you can be a whistleblower and not be executed for it.”