Encryption, the point at which high technology and politics meet, is once again a hot topic on the Net. With the takeover of PGP Incorporated by Network Associates (formerly anti-virus company McAfee), the image of a major privacy advocate has taken a hammering.
PGP founder Philip Zimmermann, who has joined Network Associates, gained cult status on the Net for his stand against US government attempts to control encryption software. His Pretty Good Privacy software made high-security encryption available as freeware.
Zimmermann's other major contribution was in speaking up for privacy and encryption as a right in the face of government moves to control encryption techniques. When an older version of PGP was exported from the US Zimmermann became the subject of a federal investigation for "exporting munitions without a license". For three years, he faced a substantial jail sentence if convicted, and funds were raised for his defence.
Even for those who did not want to use the program, it was worth downloading PGP for the punchy introduction to encryption techniques Zimmermann had included in the help files. Better still were his arguments that strong encryption is the individual's only privacy safeguard in an age where electronic snooping and data collection become ever easier. He poured scorn on government arguments that it needed to control encryption to fight terrorism and drug trafficking. "If encryption is outlawed only outlaws will have encryption," he wrote, pointing out that major criminals would disregard anti-encryption rules.
The US government proposal, less drastic than the current law in France, Russia and many other countries, was for key-recovery. That is, a backdoor key would have to be supplied for any encryption product. This key would be held in trust until law-enforcement agencies went through certain procedures to prove their need for the backdoor key and begin eavesdropping (PGP's new owner McAfee is for key recovery).
Zimmermann was not impressed. "By building an infrastructure optimized for surveillance, the US is acting as a bad role model for third-world police states and emerging democracies of the Eastern bloc," he said last year. He rejected keyrecovery as undemocratic, anti-privacy and unworkable.
Now this statement and others like it are being hurled back at him. The widespread movement which feels that people should have access to whatever technological tools they want to protect their privacy seems to have lost one of its biggest supporters.
The international PGP home page is at: www.pgpi.com