Of any pseudo-pop-quasi-underground-counter-cultural movement, the CypherPunks had the most appeal to my individual philosophy.

Me too. I got to attend a few of their meetings, read some of their work, and socialize with some of the luminaries in the field. After one of the meetings we all journeyed up in to the Santa Cruz Mountains for a party, and there I got to spend an entertaining hour sitting in a hot tub* talking to Phil Zimmerman about his travails at the hands of the government trying to suppress his "Pretty Good Privacy" software. Phil's a rather quiet teddy-bear type with a round baby face; hard to imagine that for a while there he was the NSA's Public Enemy Number One and vilified by the government in the same terms we hear applied to terrorists today. I've been around the block a few too many times to take at face value the government's claims about who's an enemy and who's a friend.

So much innocent optimism and enthusiasm back then. I look back at that time in the late 90s as a sort of Golden Age when all things seemed possible.

(* You're dying to know: Were we naked? Yup. Anything else in a hot tub is a travesty. Social nudity's pretty routine around those parts, and only in California is it routine for a business meeting continue in the nude.)