Why I Wrote PGP

I was sharing with some friends that I have been surprised at how political conversations around crypto technology end up becoming, but that upon reflections perhaps that was appropriate as crypto has the potential to disrupt politics. I was trying to think if any other technology had a similar experience and it hit me that public key encryption has many similar characteristics. Encryption and Crypto both have potentials to threaten power structures. Encryption battles started in earnest in the 90's and we are still arguing about it. Should the government have a backdoor to your phone? That argument has been around for 30 years.

Anyway, this got me following many links around PGP and going back to Phil Zimmerman, who the government threatened litigation against. I found this article from 1991 (updated in 1999) where Zimmerman shared why he wrote PGP.

Advances in technology will not permit the maintenance of the status quo, as far as privacy is concerned. The status quo is unstable. If we do nothing, new technologies will give the government new automatic surveillance capabilities that Stalin could never have dreamed of. The only way to hold the line on privacy in the information age is strong cryptography.

I love that this is now 30 years old, and the topics and themes are still as clear today as they were then.