Phil Zimmermann Talk Summary And Audio

Ames Cornish writes "Philip Zimmermann, the creator of PGP, spoke on Security and Privacy to a standing-room-only crowd in San Francisco on July 31st. There is a short summary and audio recording of the event on the Software Development Forum site. Phil talked about Dmitry Sklyarov, Nicodemo Scarfo, Phil's own experience as the victim of US government persecution, and how automatic weapons were involved in the attempt to get export permission for PGP." The MP3 is at the bottom of the page.

Comments

Re:Zimmerman: prosecution vs. persecution

[philovivero]

I'll bite. I've followed the Phil Zimmerman story for several years with some interest.

I'll summarise the other side of the story for you: the NSA and FBI don't want anyone to be in possession of cryptographic technology because it makes it harder to spy on U.S. citizens. They have consistently lied to congress to keep bad laws and regulations on the books. They have consistently harassed good citizens who are trying to get the useless laws and regulations changed.

The result? When I, a United States citizen currently residing in New Zealand want to download a copy of CFS (cryptographic filesystem) I can't, because of U.S. export restrictions (!).

Phil Zimmerman and people like him have made a slight dent in the stupidity, but it's not enough. Until the U.S. government lets go of its desire to spy on its own citizens, things will remain bad. In the meantime, non-US countries will be on the forefront of secure communications technology, because they're allowed to export their software.