Our mission is the restoration of civil rights that have been abolished by technical means during the first stage of the information revolution.

Together with different clusters of cyber liberties groups from five continents quintessenz has run worldwide information kampaigns since 1996. Our main topiqs are the current governmental and private sector surveillance overkill, new data retention law proposals by the EU, the Council of Europe or the so called G7 states that undermine fundamental rights: freedom of information, the right to personal privacy and data integrity, the right to communicate freely.

Founded in summer 1994 quintessenz started as the first German language e-zine on the net that was published weekly. To name just two highlights of that time: In 1996 the publication of two internal OECD draft papers concerning the global future use of cryptography by quintessenz had some international repercussions. In cooperation with Telepolis we published the infamous ENFOPOL 98 paper on the net, an internal working plan by the EU Council for the future surveillance of all digital communication. Most of the editions 1994-1998 can be found in the public FTP archive of the Austrian National Library.