•
1993: Young and Natsios get on the internet. •
1996: Cryptome was officially created out of their architectural practice. •
1999: In
October journalist
Declan McCullagh wrote about Young's perusal of the site's access logs. •
2003: In January 2003, Cryptome received a grand jury subpoena for site access logs from Massachusetts. Cryptome responded by saying that there were no logs. Later that year, the FBI visited Cryptome to discuss recent postings "intended to expose national security gaps." •
2006: Cryptome became one of the early organizers of
WikiLeaks. •
2007: In the early part of the year, Young and Natsios left Wikileaks. Cryptome alleged that the shutdown is a censorship attempt in response to posts about the
Coast Guard's Deepwater program. •
2010: Cryptome's
Earthlink account was compromised, leading to its website being
hacked and Cryptome's data copied. In
February, Cryptome is briefly shut down by
Network Solutions for alleged
DMCA violations after it posted a "Microsoft legal spy manual". In
September, Cryptome published a list of
Intelligence and National Security Alliance members, alleging that they were
spies. •
2012: In
February, the Cryptome website was hacked to infect visitors with malware. •
2013: In
February, Cryptome's website, email and
Twitter account were compromised, exposing whistleblowers and sources that had corresponded with Cryptome via email. Cryptome blamed hackers Ruxpin and
Sabu, who was an
FBI informant at the time. In
June two US Secret Service agents visited Cryptome to request removal of a former presidential Bush family email allegedly hacked by
Guccifer. (According to Network Solutions's website, logs are deleted after thirty days and Cryptome could choose to prevent the logging.) •
2014: Cryptome attempted to raise $100,000 to fund the website and its other disclosure initiatives. In
June, Cryptome was pulled offline again when malware was found infecting visitors to the site. In
July, Cryptome said it would publish the remaining NSA documents taken by
Edward Snowden in the "coming weeks". •
2015: In
September, Cryptome announced that their
encryption keys are
compromised. A few days later, Cryptome filed for incorporation in New York. Later that month, a
GCHQ document leaked by
Edward Snowden revealed that the agency is monitoring visits to Cryptome. In
October, a sold edition (
USB stick) of the Cryptome archive was observed to contain web server logs, containing clues to the identities of Cryptome visitors. The logs had been mailed out to users who ordered the site's archive at least since 2007. Cryptome posted pictures of logs dating back to the site's creation, claiming that Cryptome is for sale. Cryptome later claimed that the sale is a parody and that "Cryptome has no logs, never has", noting that their "various ISPs have copious logs of many kinds" along with metadata and that Cryptome tracks these "to see what happens to our files". In
July, Cryptome alleged
LinkNYC was "tracking Cryptome's movements through the city" after the company responded to Cryptome's social media posts by attempting to prevent them from photographing the company's installations. •
2020: In
September, Cryptome testified that they published the unredacted
cables before WikiLeaks, and were never contacted by law enforcement or instructed to remove them. •
2022 In
December, John Young wrote to the
U.S. Justice Department saying that because he published the same leaked government documents at the centre of the U.S. case against
Julian Assange, he should be indicted for violating the
Espionage Act and a co-defendant at Assange's trial. •
2023 In
January, Cryptome said that Twitter, Inc. suspended permanently the @Cryptome_org Twitter account, citing no reason. In
August, Cryptome announced that the site would be closed until Julian Assange is freed.
Relationship to WikiLeaks In the 1990s, John Young and
Julian Assange were in regular contact on the
Cypherpunks mailing list. In late 2006, John Young joined
WikiLeaks' advisory board before its public launch. Young also acted as its public face by first registering the WikiLeaks domain. Young revealed that he was approached by Julian Assange and asked to be the public face of Wikileaks; Young agreed and his name was listed on the website's original domain registration form. In a 2010 interview with
CNET.com John Young accused the organisation of a lack of transparency regarding its fundraising and financial management. He stated his belief that WikiLeaks could not guarantee whistleblowers the anonymity or confidentiality they claimed and that he "would not trust them with information if it had any value, or if it put me at risk or anyone that I cared about at risk." Cryptome ended on bad terms with Wikileaks, with Young directly accusing them of selling classified material and calling them "a criminal organization". In a separate interview, he called Assange a
narcissist and compared him to
Henry Kissinger. Young also accused
George Soros and the
Koch brothers of "backing Wikileaks generously". In September 2020, Cryptome testified that they published the unredacted diplomatic cables before WikiLeaks, and were never contacted by law enforcement or instructed to remove them. In December 2022, John Young wrote to the U.S. Justice Department saying that, because he published the same leaked government documents at the centre of the U.S. case against Julian Assange, he should be indicted for violating the Espionage Act and a co-defendant at Assange's trial. In August 2023, Cryptome announced that the site would be closed until Julian Assange is freed. ==Reception==