Wired On Friday: CryptoRights's pioneering encryption service helps clients preserve the secrecy of their files from the prying eyes of regimes which don't prioritise the public good.

It was under the black sun of the 1998 Anguilla eclipse that Dave Del Torto, long-time cypherpunk, decided that what the world needed was a mathematical human rights group.

Del Torto was one of the first cypherpunks, back when they were a couple of dozen mathematicians, coders and thinkers scattered around the Bay Area of California, enthusing about the possibilities of a newish, somewhat obscure, branch of mathematics.

It was 1992, and public key cryptography was sneaking from the cloisters of academic codebreaking into the wider world. It was a sly but sound new scheme for encrypting digital messages. Based on a formula that could be expressed in a couple of lines, its mathematical rigour and simplicity promised near-perfect privacy. Messages encoded with this "strong crypto" could not be broken even by the most powerful computers.

As an algorithmic offshoot of cryptography, it was fascinating. But as an instrument of social change, it was mind-boggling. The ingenious structure of the algorithm opened up wonderful new possibilities in the emerging world of computer networks. It let you authenticate digital documents: prove definitively that they were from who they said they were from. Twisted another way, the same formulae offered perfect anonymity: you could contact conversations - even enact financial deals, using a digital equivalent of currency - with strangers, without ever knowing who or where they were.

Hence the cypherpunks: scrappy "cryptology amateurs for social irresponsibility", who wanted to take these routines and see how far they could change the world. Del Torto was there, when the hopes were high. And six years later, he was still hanging out with the same folk, this time on a cruise ship in the tax haven of Anguilla, toasting a solar eclipse with the other attendees of Financial Cryptography 1998.

Life was good: even if the rest of the world had not caught fire in the heat of the new privacy, the world of banking and international finance seemed to like the idea. Del Torto and the other cypherpunks had rich clients. Life was good. Except: where was the revolution?

Stuck, mostly, in the same financial world. Universal crypto had been stymied - mostly by governments fearful of its effects. Anonymity, perfect privacy and secure digital money: fine for financiers, but what if it spread to darker corners?

The cypherpunks described the authorities' fears as "the four horsemen of the infocalypse": crypto-enabled paedophiles, money-launderers, drug-dealers - and of course terrorists.

During the early days of strong crypto, cryptographers were hassled and threatened with prosecution: eventually the very formulae they worked with were classed as ammunition by the US government. Del Torto's colleague Phil Zimmermann spent three years being investigated by the US government for uploading his encryption program, Pretty Good Privacy, to where uncleared foreigners might have downloaded it.

The government's harassment of cryptographers was stopping their products spreading to the people that many cypherpunks - including Del Torto - felt needed it the most. Zimmerman wrote his program for domestic nuclear disarmament activists.

And yet here Del Torto was, contracting for rich, contented, multinationals. "I realised," says Del Torto, with the obviousness of hindsight, "that I was working for the wrong people."

And as dusk rose around the cruise ship, he declared his new vocation. He'd start a human rights organisation: to promote everybody's right to mathematics; everybody's right to strong crypto. Crypto as a human right.

In the next five years, bit by bit, Torto did just that. In Guatemala, human rights lawyers were trained by Del Torto's computer experts to protect torture witnesses' testimony with encryption so secure not even the government (which owns the group's local ISP) can break it. In Russia, CryptoRights's team taught environmental groups how to preserve the anonymity of military officers who are leaking the details of the former Soviet Union's ecological cover-ups.

In the Middle East, Israeli peace groups are planning to talk online with their opposite numbers in Palestine via channels that will be secure from surveillance from either of their governments.

Despite the worthy intentions - or perhaps because of them - Del Torto's operation staggered along on a shoestring. Cypherpunks write code, not cheques. As much as they sympathised with his aims, they provided thin pickings.

Then, last December, everything changed. A class action against internet bookseller Amazon and its webtracking subsidiary Alexa ended with both sides agreeing to distribute the $1.9 million (€1.8 million) settlement to deserving causes. The case had been fought over the accidental breaching of Alexa's user's privacy, so the court went looking for privacy-enhancing non-profits. Del Torto's team found themselves looking down the right end of a quarter of million dollars.

Now Del Torto is approaching engineers who he previously hit for cash, offering them instead a share in the sort of crazy, idealistic projects they've dreamed of, but staid employers would never consider. A wearable device that lets newsgatherers and humanitarians transmit video and audio directly from the front line without worrying about confiscated film or satellite dishes. A global secure communication system that would let cypherpunkish non-government organisations identify and vouch for each other electronically, without ever having to meet. Wireless mesh networks that will let aid workers form emergency broadcast networks so quickly as to be the envy of the most futuristic infantrymen.

Ambitious stuff for a start-up charity with just a handful of staff. A quarter of a million dollars can vanish very quickly, when fired in a dozen directions. But Del Torto's vision is already piquing the interest of the younger cypherpunks; other, monied charities; and, in these insecure times, even the United States' own military. "They've been sniffing around," says Del Torto.

He seems fine with that. For all the work it puts into helping its clients preserve the secrecy of their files, CryptoRights's files will be an open book.

As with PGP, and the majority of cypherpunk coding, the charity's programs and designs will be open source and freely available for anyone to copy - no matter what the motives. "There are good guys on every side," says Del Torto.

And human rights, even the mathematical ones, are for everyone.