Zero-Knowledge Systems (also known as ZKS) was a Canadian privacy technology software and services company, best known for the Freedom Network, its privacy network. It was founded by brothers Austin Hill & Hamnett Hill and their father Hamnett Hill Sr. (aka Hammie Hill) in 1997. Its headquarters were in

Montreal, Quebec Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-p ...

. Early investors and board members were Mike Santer and Alex Hern co-founder

Inktomi Inktomi Corporation was a company that provided software for Internet service providers (ISPs). It was incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. Customers included Microsoft, HotBot, Amazon.com, eBay ...

. The company rebranded under the new name Radialpoint though was no longer a developer of privacy-enhancing technologies.A New Kind of Mafia in Montreal? How a Culture of Startup CEOs are Playing the Angel Game
BetaKit. September 3, 2013. Retrieved August 2, 2014 . Most recently it was acquired by AppDirect and rebranded as AppHelp. Zero-Knowledge Systems was one of the first large-scale commercial attempts to combine

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 gr ...

principles with a for-profit technology. During its heyday ZKS captured the media's imagination and successfully drew attention to the privacy risks of unsuspecting internet users. Being based in Canada allowed it to circumvent US ban on strong cryptography, considered "munitions" at the time. ZKS was featured in ''Wired'' magazine as early as 1999. The ZKS Freedom Network was a pioneer of anonymous networking technology, predating the

Tor Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia S ...

network. Some of the enterprise privacy research was also inherited by the IBM Tivoli digital rights management suite. Several of the company's employees were from an academic privacy-enhanced technology background:

Stefan Brands Stefan Brands designed the core cryptographic protocols of Microsoft's U-Prove technology. Earlier versions of these protocols were implemented by DigiCash, Zero-Knowledge Systems, Credentica, and a consortium of European banks and IT organizat ...

(senior cryptographer) and cypherpunk background

Ian Goldberg Ian Avrum Goldberg (born March 31, 1973) is a cryptographer and cypherpunk. He is best known for breaking Netscape's implementation of SSL (with David Wagner), and for his role as chief scientist of Radialpoint (formerly Zero Knowledge Sys ...

(chief scientist) and

Adam Back Adam Back (born July 1970) is a British cryptographer and cypherpunk. He is the CEO of Blockstream, which he co-founded in 2014. He invented Hashcash, which is used in the Bitcoin mining process. Life Back was born in London, England, in ...

(architect & cryptographer). Other employees included

Mike Shaver Mike Shaver (born February 17, 1977) is a former Engineering Director at Facebook. He is also known for his work on several open source projects. He has been involved in the development of many of the technologies that enable interactive web pages, ...

(chief software officer),

Adam Shostack Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

Anton Stiglic Anton may refer to: People *Anton (given name), including a list of people with the given name *Anton (surname) Places *Anton Municipality, Bulgaria **Anton, Sofia Province, a village *Antón District, Panama **Antón, a town and capital of th ...

, Jonathan Wilkins and

Ulf Moller Ulf, or Ulv is a masculine name common in Scandinavia and Germany. It derives from the Old Norse word for "wolf" (''úlfr'', see Wulf). The oldest written record of the name's occurrence in Sweden is from a runestone of the 11th century. The fe ...

."Dr. Stefan Brands Joins Zero-Knowledge Systems"
CANADIAN CORPORATE NEWS. February 23, 2000. Retrieved February 4, 2014.

Stephanie Perrin Stephanie is a female name that comes from the Greek name Στέφανος (Stephanos) meaning "crown". The male form is Stephen. Forms of Stephanie in other languages include the German "Stefanie", the Italian, Czech, Polish, and Russian "Stef ...

served as Chief Privacy Officer for the firm before she became Director of Research and Policy at the

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada The privacy commissioner of Canada (french: Commissaire à la protection de la vie privée du Canada) is a non-partisan ombudsman and officer of the Parliament of Canada. The commissioner investigates complaints regarding violations of the feder ...

, and helped to draft

PIPEDA The ''Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act'' (PIPEDA; french: Loi sur la protection des renseignements personnels et les documents électroniques) is a Canadian law relating to data privacy. It governs how private sector ...

, the Canadian privacy law.http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/wks2013/view_resource_person.php?id=172

References

Further reading