Background on Phil Zimmermann: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=zimmermann http://www.mccullagh.org/image/6/phil-zimmermann.html --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1234-2001Sep20.html By Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, September 21, 2001; Page E01 The tears have come in the kitchen, the car and the shower, too. Like many Americans, Phil Zimmermann, a stocky, 47-year-old computer programmer, has been crying every day since last week's terrorist attacks. He has been overwhelmed with feelings of guilt. Zimmermann is the inventor of a computer program called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP. He posted the tool for free on the Internet 10 years ago; it was the first to allow ordinary people to encrypt messages so only those with a "key" could read them. No government or law enforcement agency has been able to get in. People warned Zimmermann back then that he could be putting powerful technology into the wrong hands. He knew that was theoretically possible, but he also knew that the program could do good: His work created a way for people in oppressed countries to communicate without fear of retribution. Now the government is investigating whether Zimmermann's technology or another scrambler was used by the hijackers to coordinate last week's attacks, and U.S. lawmakers are calling for new restrictions on the use and distribution of the technology. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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