Philip Zimmermann wants to protect online privacy. Who could object to that?
He has found out once already. In 1991, he developed an encryption program called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, for use in sending scrambled e-mail messages.
It gained a following among advocates of privacy rights as well as international human rights groups – and a three-year federal criminal investigation in the United States into whether he had violated export restrictions on cryptographic software. The case was dropped in 1996, and Zimmermann, a computer scientist based in Menlo Park, California, started PGP Inc. to sell his software commercially.
Now he is again inviting government scrutiny. By Monday, he plans to release a free Windows software program, Zfone, that encrypts a computer-to- computer voice conversation so both parties can be confident that no one is listening in. It became available this year to Macintosh and Linux users of the calling system known as voice over Internet protocol.
The Federal Communications Commission has begun adopting rules that would force Internet service providers and companies that use voice over Internet protocol to adopt the technology permitting law enforcement officials to monitor conventional telephone calls. But for now, at least, regulation exempts programs that operate directly between computers and not through a hub.
In the trade-off between privacy and security, Zimmermann contends that the world is better off with strong cryptography. Zfone can be considered an asset, in fact, he said, as it allows people to have secret conversations but not to hide their Internet protocol addresses, which could be traceable geographically. Those observed having a secured conversation could come under suspicion, of course. But for that reason, he argued, sophisticated criminals or terrorists are unlikely to use the technology.
“I’m sympathetic to the needs of the intelligence community to catch the bad guys,” he said. “I specifically protect the content the criminals want, while simultaneously not interfering with the traffic analysis” that the National Security Agency is trying to do.
“You could make the case that I’m being socially responsible,” he said.
Ain’t a bad case to make. Not that it will impress the Feds.
If the government had shown respect for our privacy and constitutional rights, I might sympathize with them. But they have proven themselves untrustworthy or our personal information.
So … YOU GO PHIL!
Now I wish someone would build-in routine encryption of all emails and all web surfing.
Especially the email! There is no reason this can’t be done. I’ve been advocating standard encryption for years.
For awhile I was bugging the Thunderbird developers but they seemed not to care. The ONLY person who seemed at all interested was… you guessed it… Phil Zimmerman who shot me off a quick email affirming my cause.
Oh, but I have to disagree with Phil on the open IP.
Having an open IP address means that my local ISP can effectively block VOIP which they’ve banned. here.
It’s interesting to note that politicians still fail to understand the global economy. They seem to think the US has a monopoly on cryptographic ideas. I have news for them. If Phil doesn’t release this some smart engineer in China, India or Europe will. The information age and global economy mean you just can’t keep secrets like this bottled up inside some geographic borders because you want to. I do think it’ll throw a bit of a stink into the US government spying program. After all, the real terrorists can already encrypt their conversations. If the public finds this our thanks to news publicity about Phil’s software they might finally understand that the government is interested in spying for more reasons than just the “war on terror”.