This is the first full account of the cypherpunks who aim to free the world's information, from the "Forbes" reporter whose work has traced their history and future, with unrivaled access to such major players as Julian Assange, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and a shadowy Wikileaks engineer.

While working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq for the United States Army in 2010, Chelsea Manning disclosed more than seven hundred thousand classified military and diplomatic records that she had smuggled out of the country on the memory card of her digital camera. In 2011 she was charged with twenty-two counts related to the unauthorized possession and distribution of classified military records, and in 2013 she was sentenced to thirty-five years...