Sean Hastings (born 1969) is an American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

cypherpunk A cypherpunk is one who advocates the widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a means of effecting social and political change. The cypherpunk movement originated in the late 1980s and gained traction with th ...

author, and security expert.

Work

In 1997, Hastings worked on

cryptographic Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More gen ...

protocols and tools free of U.S. cryptographic export restrictions with Vincent Cate, who started the International Conference on Financial Cryptography in Anguilla that same year. Hastings founded

HavenCo HavenCo Limited was a data haven, data hosting services company, founded in 2000 to operate from Sealand, a unrecognised self-declared principality that occupies HM Fort Roughs off the coast of England. In November 2008, operations of Haven ...

in 2000, originally incorporating in his country of residence,

Anguilla Anguilla is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Sa ...

, before a second incorporation in the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They are divided into two Crown Dependencies: the Jersey, Bailiwick of Jersey, which is the largest of the islands; and the Bailiwick of Guernsey, ...

. Hastings was the CEO; other co-founders included

Ryan Lackey 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, and operated BlueIraq, a communications company. He speaks at numerous conferences and ...

and

Sameer Parekh Sameer Parekh () is the founder of C2Net Software, Inc. While in high school in Libertyville, Illinois, he published an underground newspaper called ''The Free Journal'', promoting libertarian ideas. In 1993 Parekh moved to Berkeley, Californi ...

. Immediately following its public launch, HavenCo was the subject of a great deal of press coverage, including Hastings' appearance, along with several cofounders and the "royal family" of the self-proclaimed, unrecognized

micronation A micronation is a polity, political entity whose representatives claim that they belong to an independent nation or sovereign state, but which lacks legal recognition by any sovereign state. Micronations are classified separately from list o ...

Sealand The Principality of Sealand () is a micronation on HM Fort Roughs (also known as Roughs Tower), an offshore platform in the North Sea. It is situated on Rough Sands, a sandbar located approximately from the coast of Suffolk and from the coa ...

, on the cover of

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

's July 2000 issue, before the company was entirely nationalised by the government of Sealand in 2002, after commercial failure and mounting tensions. In 2002, Hastings began work on

seasteading Seasteading is the creation of permanent dwellings in international waters, so-called seasteads, that are independent of established governments. No structure on the high seas has yet been created and recognized as a sovereign state. Proposed ...

with Patri Friedman, a project aimed at building floating communities free from the restrictions of current governments. This collaboration continued through 2009, including a talk by Hastings at the Seasteading Institute's annual conference. Hastings is the cofounder, with

Eric S. Raymond Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is an American software developer, open-source software advocate, and author of the 1997 essay and 1999 book ''The Cathedral and the Bazaar''. He wrote a guidebook for the R ...

, of Green-Span, an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

infrastructure for

trust Trust often refers to: * Trust (social science), confidence in or dependence on a person or quality It may also refer to: Business and law * Trust (law), a legal relationship in which one person holds property for another's benefit * Trust (bu ...

and

reputation management Reputation management, refers to the Social influence, influencing, controlling, enhancing, or concealing of an individual's or group's reputation. It is a marketing technique used to modify a person's or a company's reputation in a positive way. ...

, begun in March 2009. Hastings is also the author, with Paul Rosenberg, of a book, ''God Wants You Dead'' (Vera Verba, 2007; ) which takes a look at the lighter side of

atheism Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the Existence of God, existence of Deity, deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the ...

and

anarchy Anarchy is a form of society without rulers. As a type of stateless society, it is commonly contrasted with states, which are centralized polities that claim a monopoly on violence over a permanent territory. Beyond a lack of government, it can ...

, and was executive producer and an actor for ''The Last Generation to Die'' a short film about near future immortality technology.

References

External links

Video of Hastings spoofed on the ''Daily Show'' with ''Jon Stewart''

Video with Hastings speaking about living on an extra-national sea platform at 2009 ''Seasteading'' conference

Online and .pdf download of the book "God Wants You Dead" by Sean Hastings and Paul Rosenberg
. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hastings, Sean 1969 births American computer businesspeople American libertarians American atheists Crypto-anarchists Cypherpunks Free software programmers Living people Computer security specialists Principality of Sealand 21st-century anarchists