For some reason Asher Wolf asked me to record a short video message for Melbourne CryptoParty.

You can watch the message on YouTube (sorry for the quality, this was my first self-recorded video message). I would strongly suggest to listen and watch messages from other great people. How I landed in such a cool bunch is a mystery to be solved…

Anyway, the text of what I was trying to say is below, for your enjoyment as you compare and contrast it with what I actually did say.

Hi there,

My name is Mike (also known as rysiek) from Warsaw Hackerspace in Poland. You might remember me from such hacktivist initiatives as Anti-ACTA campaign in Europe and the Telecomix jellyfish collective.

I was asked to share with you my view why crypto is important.

It’s important, because privacy is important.

It’s important, because being certain you know who can (and who cannot) read the message you sent is important.

For some reason we do put snail-mail letters in envelopes, hiding them from the eyes of good people working at post offices. And yet, we keep on sending our most private, most intimate, most important information in unencrypted e-mails and via unencrypted internet messaging services, putting them right in front of preying eyes of data-mining corporations, our beloved government officials and security agencies.

Had any government in the developed world announced that they are opening, reading and censoring snail-mail on post offices, people would riot.

And yet when Internet filtering schemes are pushed – in the name of fighting the dreaded paedonazis or saving our dear entertainment industry from themselves – general public often doesn’t seem to notice nor care, doesn’t seem to make the connect between the phrase “Internet filtering” and words “censorship” and “surveilance”.

One of the reasons ACTA was so explosive in Poland was because we remember. Most of Poles alive today had a taste of a totalitarian regime. Some faught hard against it. “Censorship” and “surveilance” are not just abstract terms for us. They are often part of family history.

So, here’s something from a Polish guy, 22 years after a totalitarian state was abolished here: if you want to know why crypto is important, just consider for a moment why you put your last snail-mail in an envelope.

Thanks and have a great CryptoParty!