Sean Hastings (born 1969) is an

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

cypherpunk A cypherpunk is any individual advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change. Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, informal g ...

author, and security expert. He is best known for being the founding

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

HavenCo HavenCo Limited was a data haven, data hosting services company, founded in 2000 to operate from Sealand, a self-declared sovereign principality that occupies a man-made former World War II defensive facility originally known as Roughs Tower ...

, the world's first formal

data haven A data haven, like a corporate haven or tax haven, is a refuge for uninterrupted or unregulated data. Data havens are locations with legal environments that are friendly to the concept of a computer network freely holding data and even protecting ...

Work

In 1997, Hastings worked on

cryptographic Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adve ...

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

in 2000, originally incorporating in his country of residence,

Anguilla Anguilla ( ) is a 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 Saint Martin. The territo ...

, before a second incorporation in the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...

. 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 ( hi, समीर परेख) 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 Parek ...

. 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

Sealand SeaLand, a division of the Maersk Group, is an American intra-regional container shipping company headquartered in Miramar, Florida with representation in 29 countries across the Americas. The company offers ocean and intermodal services using ...

, on the cover of

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

'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 concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, in international waters outside the territory claimed by any government. No one has yet created a structure on the high seas that has been recognized as a sov ...

with

Patri Friedman Patri Friedman (born July 29, 1976) is an American libertarian, neoreactionary, anarcho-capitalist, and theorist of political economy. He founded The Seasteading Institute, a non-profit that explores the creation of sovereign ocean colonies. ...

, 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 The Seasteading Institute (TSI) is a 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization formed to facilitate the establishment of autonomous, mobile communities on seaborne platforms operating in international waters (a proposed practice c ...

'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 ...

, 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 the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

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 body of law under which one person holds property for the benefit of another * Trust (bus ...

and

reputation management Reputation management, originally a public relations term, refers to the influencing, controlling, enhancing, or concealing of an individual's or group's reputation. The growth of the internet and social media led to growth of reputation managem ...

, 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 deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...

and

anarchy Anarchy is a society without a government. It may also refer to a society or group of people that entirely rejects a set hierarchy. ''Anarchy'' was first used in English in 1539, meaning "an absence of government". Pierre-Joseph Proudhon adopted ...

, 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