Sameer Parekh ( hi, समीर परेख) is the founder of C2Net Software, Inc. While in high school in

Libertyville, Illinois Libertyville is a village in Lake County, Illinois, United States, and a northern suburb of Chicago. It is located west of Lake Michigan on the Des Plaines River. The 2020 census population was 20,579. It is part of Libertyville Township, whi ...

, he published an

underground newspaper The terms underground press or clandestine press refer to periodicals and publications that are produced without official approval, illegally or against the wishes of a dominant (governmental, religious, or institutional) group. In specific rec ...

called ''The Free Journal'', promoting libertarian ideas. In 1993 Parekh moved to

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

, to attend the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, and joined the

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 ...

s. In his second year at Cal, he started C2Net, a privacy-oriented ISP which provided anonymous accounts and an

anonymous remailer An anonymous remailer is a server that receives messages with embedded instructions on where to send them next, and that forwards them without revealing where they originally came from. There are cypherpunk anonymous remailers, mixmaster anonymo ...

, and was the first home of the Anonymizer web surfing proxy. Through the mid- to late 1990s, Parekh was a frequently cited critic of U.S. policy on encryption software. The cover story for the September 1997 issue of ''

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'' focused on his views of the political and social impact of cryptography. Through C2Net, Parekh pioneered the offshore development of cryptography by U.S. companies to avoid U.S. regulation, and later helped organize the first global conference on financial cryptography in Anguilla. He was also an advisor to and the chairman of HavenCo, a company that attempted to create a data haven in the Principality of Sealand. After selling C2Net to

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become a ...

, Parekh traveled around Central and Eastern Europe in 2001 on a DJ tour. He played in countries such as Poland,

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia ( Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hu ...

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Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

. He also produced a number of "renegade" events in the Port of Oakland. Parekh was a 2007 Lincoln Fellow of the

Claremont Institute The Claremont Institute is a conservative think tank based in Upland, California. The institute was founded in 1979 by four students of Harry V. Jaffa. It produces the ''Claremont Review of Books,'' ''The American Mind'', and other publications. ...

. As of spring 2012, Parekh is the proprietor of Falkor Systems, a flying robot startup based in the New York area. In 2014, he was "Entrepreneur in Residence" at the Correll Robotics lab,

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University o ...

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Parekh, Sameer Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of California, Berkeley alumni American computer businesspeople American people of Indian descent Cypherpunks

See also

References