The CryptoRights Foundation, Inc. (CRF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in San Francisco and established in 1998, notable for the development of HighFire and work on other encryption standards, such as PGP and IPsec. The organization supports the use of cryptography to protect the privacy and security of communications, ensure freedom of expression and the press, and to protect the privacy of individuals from surveillance and consumer profiling that could negatively affect the work of social justice, journalism and human rights organizations.[1]
Significant technology projects include the development of HighFire (from "Human rights Firewall"), a secure, distributed communications platform for private NGO communications, and the related HighWire, a secure wireless human rights communications networking project based on the pioneering open source Software Defined Radio source code now maintained at GnuRadio. As of 2011, CRF is quiet but still active, continuing to provide free security training and support for human rights and journalism organizations on the use of cryptography[1] and doing early research and development on a new private identity and medical information security project known only by the cryptic codename "P6".
The organization was conceived and founded on a ship during a total solar eclipse by five cryptography experts and cyberliberty activists led by Dave Del Torto (an early PGP volunteer and employee at PGP, Inc and co-founder of the OpenPGP Working Group at the IETF) and John Gilmore,[2] co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. CRF has included directors, staff, advisors, volunteers and engineers such as Eric Blossom, Jon Callas, David Chaum, Cindy Cohn, Whit Diffie, Jennifer Granick, Peter Hope-Tindall, Joichi Ito, Stanton "Mech" McCandlish, Declan McCullagh, Sameer Parekh and other notable cryptography, computer security, civil liberties and privacy activists.
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