Cypherpunk: noun, derived from
Cyberpunk. According to
Steven Levy's 'Hackers', the term was coined by a reporter for the magazine
Mondo 2000 who went by the name
St. Jude. The term originally applied to a group of about twenty people who attended a crypto conference called
CASI in September 1992.
The term caught on beyond all expectations with the publication of the Cypherpunk Manifesto drafted by Eric Hughes. The term applies to those who believe that unfettered access to unbreakable cryptography would be a boon to society, and that any cipher controlled/created by the NSA is suspect. They generally believe that the right to privacy is a more important consideration than possible illegal acts committed with the help of cryptography.
Responsible for the distribution of the original version of PGP.