Ryan Lackey

Ryan Lackey (also known as "rdl" and "octal") is an entrepreneur and computer security professional. His major accomplishments include co-founding HavenCo, the world's first data haven. He also speaks at numerous conferences and trade shows, including DefCon[?], 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, and is involved with several book and movie projects. Ryan's current projects include continuing involvement with HavenCo, several open source hosting and utility services, and OpenDBS, an anonymous electronic cash system.

Ryan was born in 1979 in Pennsylvania, and has also lived in Southern California, Ohio, Oakland, Boston, Anguilla, London, Amsterdam, and Sealand.

Ryan has been a user of the Internet since 1988, and an active user since the early 1990s. As a teenager, Ryan was briefly involved with the Globewide Network Academy. While a student at MIT (he later dropped out) Ryan become 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. Later that year, Ryan spoke at a symposium on electronic cash in Boston; then 2 weeks later moved to Anguilla to establish an electronic cash company. Anguilla was selected since at the time cryptography export from the US was illegal. Nine months later Ryan moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, spent 11 months recovering from the barren wasteland that was Anguilla, and then set off to London and Sealand to establish HavenCo. As of November 2001, Ryan lives full-time on Sealand, spending several months at a time with little human contact except the Internet.

Ryan is active in the cypherpunk community, dbs, cryptography, dgc, e-gold, and cypherpunks mailing lists, and follows several p2p and open-source software development projects. One of his projects is providing an offshore host for various interesting software and service efforts. Ryan's main focus throughout 2002 is electronic cash, in the form of OpenDBS[?], an unencumbered open-source library and supporting services. Ryan is also interested in the work of Gerald Bull, commercial spaceflight, nanotechnology, crypto-anarchy and anarchocapitalism, entheogens and brain chemistry, and life extension.

Ryan can be contacted via email at ryan@havenco.com.

See also:

• Sealand
• ecash[?]

References:

• http://www.venona.com/rdl/ -- Personal page of Ryan Lackey
• http://www.havenco.com/ -- HavenCo
• http://www.sealandgov.org/ -- The Official Principality of Sealand Homepage