R.U. Sirius: Could you tell me a bit about discovering the cypherpunk idea and how it affected you? Also, anything about your sense of the history of the group and/or anything that was inspiring, like manifestos by Tim May or Eric Hughes

Jacob Appelbaum: I discovered the mailing list and the general ideas through some friends I’d met away from the keyboard. I later met a number of cypherpunks in the San Francisco bay area and at various cypherpunk events around the world.

RU: It’s interesting to have a book on Cypherpunk with Julian Assange as the author (his name, at least, is writ largest) when most people think of WikiLeaks as an anti-secrecy organization. Did he (or all of you) intentionally want to complexify the discussion around WikiLeaks or did anything like that even cross your mind(s)?

JA: Personal privacy and institutional transparency are complementary ideas that help to create a free and open society.

Read the full interview at The Verge.

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