#./BitLen 

#FreeSnowden

Privacy advocate Edward Snowden is a former NSA contractor who became one of the most significant whistleblowers in history. He was criminally charged in 2013 for two counts under the Espionage Act and theft of government property. Each charge carries up to 10 years in prison. His passport was revoked by the US State Department, so he currently lives in Russia as a permanent resident. 

Snowden's actions and beliefs align strongly with Cypherpunk philosophy:

Core Parallels:
- Believes privacy through encryption is essential for freedom
- Advocates for technical solutions to political problems
- Supports decentralization of power
- Emphasizes individual sovereignty over data
- Views transparency and privacy as asymmetric (institutions should be transparent, individuals private)

Practical Applications:
- Promotes use of encryption tools (Signal, Tor)
- Advocates for open-source software
- Supports cryptocurrency and financial privacy
- Emphasizes the importance of code as resistance
- Warns about surveillance capitalism

His famous quote "Privacy is power" echoes the Cypherpunk manifesto's core principles about the relationship between privacy, freedom, and power. Like the Cypherpunks, he believes the solution to bad governance isn't necessarily new leaders, but new cryptographic tools that make bad governance impossible.

At the core of Snowden's worldview are the Cypherpunk ideals of using cryptography and technology to protect individual privacy and civil liberties against overreach by powerful institutions. Like the Cypherpunks, he sees strong encryption as essential for safeguarding freedom in the digital age.

Snowden's revelations about mass surveillance programs such as PRISM demonstrated the vast scale at which governments were collecting and monitoring citizens' communications and metadata. This reflected the Cypherpunk concern about the asymmetry of power, where the powerful could observe the lives of the many while keeping their own activities hidden.

Just as Cypherpunks advocated, Snowden believed that technology could empower individuals to take back control of their data and communications. His support for open-source, decentralized tools like Tor, crypto, and secure messaging apps aligns with the Cypherpunk emphasis on self-sovereignty and the distributing of trust away from centralized authorities.

Moreover, Snowden's act of whistleblowing itself was a quintessential Cypherpunk move - leveraging his technical knowledge to expose the secret workings of the surveillance state. His belief that transparency should flow upward, from government to citizen, mirrors the Cypherpunk philosophy of "privacy for the weak, transparency for the powerful."

Snowden's ongoing advocacy for digital rights and his stalwart defense of encryption in the face of government pressure further cement his status as a modern-day Cypherpunk. His worldview and actions exemplify the continued importance of the Cypherpunk vision in an era of unprecedented technological control and monitoring of citizens by the state.

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