Ryan Lackey

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Ryan Donald Lackey (born March 17, 1979) is an entrepreneur and computer security professional. He was a co-founder of HavenCo, the world's first data haven. He also speaks at numerous conferences and trade shows, including DEF CON, RSA Data Security Conference, on various topics in the computer security field, and has appeared on the cover of Wired Magazine, in numerous television, radio, and print articles on HavenCo and Sealand. Lackey operates Blue Iraq, a communications and IT company serving the DoD and Iraqi domestic market in Iraq.

Lackey was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania and has also lived throughout the US and Europe, Anguilla, Sealand, Dubai, and Iraq. As a teenager, he was briefly involved with the Globewide Network Academy. While a student at MIT (he later dropped out) Lackey became interested in electronic cash and distributed systems, originally for massively multiplayer online gaming. This interest led to attending several conferences (Financial Cryptography 98, various MIT presentations), participating on mailing lists such as "cypherpunks" and "dbs", and eventually implementing patented Chaumian digital cash in an underground library, HINDE, with Ian Goldberg, named after Hinde ten Berge, a Dutch cypherpunk also present at FC98. In 1999 Lackey lived in the San Francisco Bay Area after a period in Anguilla before moving to the unrecognized state of Sealand off the coast of the United Kingdom and establishing HavenCo. In December 2002, he left HavenCo following a dispute with other company directors and the Sealand "Royal Family."