Remembering John Young, co-founder of web archive Cryptome John Young, the co-founder of the legendary internet archive Cryptome, died at the age of 89 on March 28. The Register talked to friends and peers who gave tribute to a bright, pugnacious man who was devoted to the public's right to know. Before WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, BayFiles, or Transparency Toolkit, there was Cryptome - an …
John Young RIP ..... a rare diamond indeed in deed, shining in the crazy rough, if ever there was one. ....... Bravo and Sayonara, and thanks for all of the phishes and the model template for situations worthy of publishing .......
The greatest threat to democracy is official secrecy which favors a few over the many.Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance -- open, secret and classified documents -- but not limited to those. Documents are removed from this site only by order served directly by a US court having jurisdiction. No court order has ever been served; any order served will be published here -- or elsewhere if gagged by order. Bluffs will be published if comical but otherwise ignored.
No downvote from me, that's one of the rare times you've made perfect sense - so long and thanks for all the phishes, indeed.
Thanks for running this obit, El Reg. Cyptome is one of vanishingly few websites where the guy who ran it genuinely deserves acclaim. A tip of my engineer's hat to John Young for wanting to record the data, not be the story.
Lest y'all forget to remember the value and fear of sensitive knowledge made generally widely known .... because of its power to pervert and corrupt and enrich and identify the command and control[lers] of the few imagining their rewarding advantage be fair, fit and proper in any Great Games Play designed to ensure the majority are continually in a struggle which has them disadvantaged and treated with arrogant and ignorant contempt by dark forces not entirely unknown
This case showed us a glimpse of the dark underbelly of this society. In which power seals the truth and organisations overpower justice. What's right and what can't be forgiven is side-stepped. That's the reality.The ones who try to expose injustice are threatened. Those who carry out justice are forced into submission. Why is this tolerated?
That's because an organisation's logic dominates an individual's beliefs. Under those in power convenience takes priority over the truth. If someone points out the injustice, they're shunned as someone who can't read the room. Those who speak up for justice are told they're disrupting the company and silenced.
Doesn't this sound familiar to all of you? At work, in school, everywhere in life .... We've accepted this absurdity.
Even though we feel it's strange, we've chosen silence. And that silence has encouraged that injustice even further.
For the organisations, for the sake of one's position, and to protect what's important ..... we have unwittingly closed the lid on our consciences. Justice has been trampled underfoot. And before long, it will be all but forgotten.
But I still want to ask. Is it really right to just say, "There's nothing I can do"?
Is it right to look the other way and say "It is what it is"? As long as we stay silent, this societal structure will not change. Can you accept this reality? Or will you keep holding your doubts?
This is entirely for you to decide.
[As much as it might please me, I cannot in all honesty claim credit for any of the above ..... which is the transcript of the last few minutes in episode 5 of "News Anchor", a Nipponese TV drama series presently being provided by Netflix.]
Tell me it doesn't speak truth to power, and shames the sham of any media and news corporation that doesn't honour the search for truth whilst wearing and disgracing the cloak and guise of a pioneering pilgrim, hell bent and heaven sent to fulfil the quest "Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation", ..... and in so doing identify yourself to everyone and everything as the problem to be resolved and removed from/for the future with the new solutions recently discovered and freely universally available to that and those enabled to use them.
And Global Operating Devices said, Let there be light: and there was light .... Genesis 1:3
It was my favourite site for years. Going a few times a week to see what was new. I read tons of documents. The man opened my eyes and ill always be thankfull to him . I still have a folder full of documents i gathered from his site. Rather naively , i was keeping copies of everything i could download from a dial-up at the time , in case the site got shut down. The man was right. We were better off knowing even if it meant teeing off governments who prefer sheepish uninformed peasants. Thank you Sir. Good job. Time to rest and have a pint. Cheers John.
Cryptome is the oldest project for online freedom of information that has never sold out or surrendered. Rest in peace John Young and condoleances to Deborah and all his family.
I discovered Cryptome during my first explorations online. I believe I had only recently come of age, and my passion for American literature led me to read contemporary debates by connecting to nascent digital communities such as The Well, Nettime, and the forums hosted by The Thing BBS in New York City. In the early days of the Internet, Cryptome distinguished itself alongside a few other websites: its site, stripped of embellishments, distributed documents unavailable elsewhere, amongst which the most interesting provided evidence of crimes committed by states or multinationals that poorly concealed their good faith. Cryptome was proof that the Internet would mean a new frontier for the freedom of information for all of us.
Some years later, about twenty years ago, I had the opportunity to meet John Young in person. This occurred in Berlin, at the Transmediale festival, where I was honoured to receive the Vilém Flusser Prize. Meeting the individual behind Cryptome, an archive that by then possessed a certain mythology for those of us in the field, was a significant experience. It was encouraging to learn that work of such magnitude could result from the dedication of individuals acting on principle, rather than from conspicuous organisations with substantial funding.
John Young still teaches us today that such activity must not aim for general approval, recognition, donations, and least of all profit. Anyone who holds dear the freedom of information can activate themselves for it even with few resources.
A life very well lived indeed.
I thought that I was pretty well read up on the Assange/ Wikileaks saga but this is the first time that I read that "Cryptome actually published the embarrassing US diplomatic cables that landed Assange in hot water the day before WikiLeaks".
That puts a new colour on the prosecution of Assange over wikileaks. Setting aside the rights and wrongs of publishing the material how was it possible for him to be pursued through the courts while it was also published in the USA without comment?
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