Rop Gonggrijp

Rop Gonggrijp
Gonggrijp at the Big Brother awards
Born	(1968-02-14) 14 February 1968 (age 49) Amsterdam
Nationality	Dutch
Known for	XS4ALL, Hack-Tic, "We Don't Trust Voting Computers"

Robbert (Rop) Valentijn Gonggrijp (born 14 February 1968) is a Dutch hacker and one of the founders of XS4ALL.

Gonggrijp was born in Amsterdam. While growing up in Wormer in the Dutch Zaanstreek area, he became known as a teenage hacker and appeared as one of the main characters in Jan Jacobs's book Kraken en Computers (Hacking and computers, Veen uitgevers 1985, ISBN ) which describes the early hacker scene in the Netherlands. Moved to Amsterdam in 1988. Founded the hacker magazine Hack-Tic in 1989. He was believed to be a major security threat by authorities in the Netherlands and the United States. In the masthead of Hack-Tic, Gonggrijp described his role as hoofdverdachte ('prime suspect'). He was convinced that the Internet would radically alter society.

In 1993, a number of people surrounding Hack-Tic including Gonggrijp founded XS4ALL. It was the first ISP that offered access to the Internet for private individuals in the Netherlands. Gonggrijp sold the company to the former enemy Dutch-Telecom KPN in 1997. After he left XS4ALL, Gonggrijp founded ITSX, a computer security evaluation company, which was bought by Madison Gurkha in 2006. In 2001, Gonggrijp started work on the Cryptophone, a mobile telephone that can encrypt conversations.

Since 1989, Gonggrijp has been the main organizer of hacker events held every four years. Originally organized by the cast of Hack-Tic, these events have continued to live to this day.

Throughout the years, he has repeatedly shown his concerns about the increasing amount of information on individuals that government agencies and companies have access to. Rop held a controversial talk titled "We lost the war" at the Chaos Communication Congress 2005 in Berlin together with Frank Rieger.