Editing Ryan Lackey

{{Short description|American businessman (born 1979)}}
{{Multiple issues|
 {{BLP sources|date=December 2022}}
 {{more footnotes|BLP=yes|date=December 2022}}
 {{Like resume|date=December 2022}}
}}
{{Infobox person
| name               = Ryan Lackey
| image              = 
| birth_name         = Ryan Donald Lackey
| birth_date         = {{birth date and age|1979|03|17}}
| birth_place        = West Chester, Pennsylvania
| website            = http://www.venona.com/rdl/
}}

'''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 trade shows, including [[DEF CON]] and the [[RSA Conference|RSA Data Security Conference]], on various topics in the computer security field, and has appeared in a ''[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]]'' magazine cover story and in numerous television, radio, and print articles, concerning HavenCo and [[Principality of Sealand|Sealand]].

== Early life ==
Lackey was born in [[West Chester, Pennsylvania]] and has lived throughout the US and Europe, and in [[Anguilla]], Sealand, Dubai, and Iraq. As a teenager, he was briefly involved with the Globewide Network Academy. Lackey attended [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]] and majored in Course 18 (mathematics), eventually dropping out due to financial constraints. While there, Lackey became interested in [[electronic cash]] and distributed systems, originally for [[massively multiplayer online gaming]]. This interest led to attending several conferences (Financial Cryptography 98, various MIT presentations), participating on mailing lists such as "[[cypherpunk]]s" and "dbs"{{clarify|date=December 2022}}, and, with [[Ian Goldberg]], eventually implementing patented [[David Chaum|Chaumian]] [[digital cash]] in an underground library{{clarify|date=December 2022}}, HINDE, which was named after [[Hinde ten Berge]], a Dutch cypherpunk also present at FC98. He contributed to the cypherpunks movement as one of the longest [[anonymous remailer]] operators.

== Career ==
In 1999 Lackey lived in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to the self-proclaimed state of Sealand and establishing HavenCo. In December 2002, he left HavenCo, following a dispute with other company directors and the Sealand "Royal Family".

During the US conflicts in [[Iraq]] and [[Afghanistan]], Lackey operated BlueIraq, a [[Very-small-aperture terminal|VSAT]] communications and IT company serving the [[United States Department of Defense|DoD]] and domestic markets in those countries.  BlueIraq's business model eventually became economically unfeasible due to an escalation in anti-Western violence (primarily in the form of [[improvised explosive device]]s) and troop drawdowns. BlueIraq sought [[venture capital]] to transform itself into a large general consumer cellular telephone company, but the 2008 financial crisis and the instability of Iraq and Afghanistan made fundraising impossible.

Lackey returned to the US and located in San Francisco, where he worked for a number of start-up companies before applying to [[Y Combinator (company)|Y Combinator]]. He was accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2011 round. Lackey founded CryptoSeal,<ref name="techcrunch">{{cite news |url=https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/14/cryptoseal-offers-vpn-as-a-service-for-all-that-secure-data-you-risk-when-using-the-coffee-house-wi-fi/ |first=Alex |last=Williams |title=CryptoSeal Offers VPN As A Service For All That Secure Data You Risk When Using The Coffee House Wi-Fi |work=[[TechCrunch]] |access-date=2013-10-22 |archive-date=2013-10-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131023062937/http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/14/cryptoseal-offers-vpn-as-a-service-for-all-that-secure-data-you-risk-when-using-the-coffee-house-wi-fi/ |url-status=live }}</ref> a VPN as a service start-up with a small group of people well known in the computer security community, and secured funding from [[Ron Conway]] and a well known venture capital fund. In June 2014, CryptoSeal was acquired by [[Cloudflare]].<ref name="claoudfare">{{cite web|url=http://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-acquires-cryptoseal/ |title=CloudFlare Acquires CryptoSeal |access-date=2015-08-21 |url-status=unfit |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150105185753/http://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-acquires-cryptoseal/ |archive-date=January 5, 2015 }}</ref>

In 2017, he began working as Chief Security Officer for the Tezos Foundation in support of the [[Tezos|Tezos blockchain]].<ref name="LinkedIn">{{cite web |title=Ryan Lackey on LinkedIn |url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlackey/ |website=LinkedIn |access-date=3 May 2022}}{{Self-published source|reason=see WP:RSPLINKEDIN|date=December 2022}}</ref> According to his LinkedIn profile, Lackey left that position in November of 2020, and as of 2021 is employed at a crypto-related insurance company in Puerto Rico.<ref name="LinkedIn" />

==See also==
*[[ecash]]
*[[Satellite Internet access]]
*[[Information security]]
*[[Iraq War]]

== Footnotes ==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20020119184905/http://havenco.com/ HavenCo]
* [http://www.venona.com/rdl/ Ryan Lackey's personal site]
* [http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/02/160253&mode=nested  Answers From Sealand: CTO Ryan Lackey Responds] July 3, 2000
* [https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven.html Welcome to Sealand. Now Bugger Off] July 2000
* Avi Freedman and Ryan Lackey gave a [http://www.h2k2.net/panels.html#sealand talk about HavenCo] at [[H2K2]] July 13, 2002
* [http://www.metacolo.com/papers/dc11-havenco/ DefCon 11 Talk about HavenCo] August 3, 2003
* [http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-5059676.html?tag=fd_top Has 'haven' for questionable sites sunk?] August 4, 2003.
* [https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/posts.html?pg=2 Wiring the War Zone: Blue Iraq] September 2005
* [http://rezendi.com/travels/bbbb.html Blood, Bullets, Bombs, and Bandwidth] 2005

<br>
{{SealandNavigation|state=collapsed}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lackey, Ryan}}
[[Category:1979 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:American computer businesspeople]]
[[Category:Computer security specialists]]
[[Category:Principality of Sealand]]
[[Category:Cypherpunks]]
[[Category:Cloudflare people]]