Fergie's Tech Blog

Zfone: Encryption Tool Rekindles Security Debate

A New York Times article by John Markoff, via The Internetional Herald Tribune, reports that:

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 advocates 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.

posted by Fergie @ 5/21/2006 11:26:00 AM