Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
Why? It took the crypto-monopoly they believed to have owned away from
them. I will first discuss the 'classic' PGP 2.6 in the following sections, and
start dealing with OpenPGP, the currently popular standard, in Section 7.1.4.
7.1.1 Phil Zimmermann, the NSA, and US Laws
The motivation for PGP was the insight that though email is very convenient,
it is also very insecure. Most users cannot imagine that the security of email
messages corresponds to that of postcards at most. I'd even claim it's less.
Anyone, like nosy mail sorters or postmen, who can touch the postcard can
read what's on the back, which is not too scary since they all are honest people,
or mostly. In contrast, nobody can say what paths email messages may take on
the Internet. Your mail may be transported across countries with lots of bribable
system administrators — perhaps paid by their secret service — who knows?
I think you know the problem, so I don't have to make an effort to convince
you. You also know that there is only one way to secure information in insecure
networks: by encrypting it.
That's exactly what Phil Zimmermann, a computer engineer from Boulder,
Colorado, thought, too. Not all business people are conservative. Phil Zimmer-
mann had even done time for activities against the nuclear race in the early
1980s. These sorts of practical experiences may have aroused a certain dislike
of overly mighty governments. At the same time, he very well saw the large
number of surveillance possibilities that the quickly evolving Internet brought
along. As an enthusiast cryptologist, he felt a need to counter 'Big Brother'.
Zimmermann thought of a cryptographically secure program that should allow
everybody
to send encrypted emails. The name PGP for 'Pretty Good Pri-
vacy' was probably intentional — it was a matter of protecting people's privacy
against the government.
PGP Was Born
Zimmermann put enormous effort into the development of PGP for about ten
years and almost ruined himself financially. In addition to his intensive dealing
with cryptology and the development of PGP, he was confronted with the law
rather unexpectedly. And what's more, at a time when he thought he was ready
to make some money from PGP.
First of all, there were patent-law problems. He didn't get a free license for
the RSA method. This meant that he couldn't sell PGP, and he couldn't
