While traveling abroad recently, I was saddened to learn that New York architect John Young, who co-founded the website Cryptome, died on 28 March 2025. He was 89 years old.
Cryptome was and remains a site dedicated to making documents available to the public that governments would rather keep secret. I was in communication (usually via PGP-encrypted email) with John beginning in the late 1990s to share information and documentation relevant to polygraph policy.
After AntiPolygraph.org went online on 2000, John helped to bring the information and documentation we’ve assembled to a much wider audience, with numerous links to our content. For this, I owe him an eternal debt of gratitude.
For more about John Young’s life and work, see Electronic Frontier Foundation executive director Cindy Cohn‘s tribute, “In Memoriam: John L. Young, Cryptome Co-Founder” and cybersecurity reporter Iain Thompson‘s “Remembering John Young, co-founder of web archive Cryptome” at The Register.
—George Maschke