“Meet Phil Zimmermann, creator of the Pretty Good Privacy
(PGP) encryption suite and one of the world’s best-known
cryptographers.“
“Programmers can be celebrities too. Just ask Philip (Phil)
Zimmermann. He’s spent most of the last decade as a folk hero, and
admits to having enjoyed that status. Just this summer, he suffered
the flip side of fame as wildly inflated rumors circulated about
his role in compromising the security of the PGP encryption suite,
and he watched his e-mail inbox fill with venom.”
“He recognizes it comes with the territory. Zimmermann is
probably the world’s best-known cryptographer. He created the
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption suite in 1991. Since then, it
has come to dominate the market for programming protection of
online confidentiality. PGP has been heralded for its role in
protecting numerous political dissidents around the world, and
earned Zimmermann the prestigious Norbert Wiener Award for
responsible use of technology in 1996, as well as the 1995 Chrysler
Award for Innovation in Design, and a 1998 Lifetime Achievement
Award from Secure Computing Magazine, along with at least a dozen
other distinctions. It also brought him into highly public patent
disputes with RSA Data Security Inc., and a nightmarish multi-year
criminal investigation by the United States government.”