Yet, a month before the bill was voted, in December 1990, a cryptography program
under the name of “PGP”(Pretty Good Privacy) made its appearance
in the Internet. The NASA attempted to break its code with no success whatsoever.
According to its programmer, Phil Zimmermann, the program was in the hands of
thousands of Americans within hours. The very next day he received a PGP coded
message from overseas. The “mutiny” had been accomplished. Dozens
of computers logged on the Net gave away the program to those who were interested.
The bill was revoked, but hell opened its gates to Zimmermann…
Almost at once, the USA services made their move against him. The old hippy
was not entirely unknown to them. In the 1980s he was apprehended twice for
joining in anti-nuclear protest marches. Since he could not be charged with
creating the program (the bill had not been passed anyway) or sending coded
messages (they are a form of expressing one’s ideas and therefore protected
by the constitutional orders pertaining to freedom of expression) we was indicted
for illegally exporting high tech weapons! Products of cryptography are included
in the same list as…F16s, laser bombs and so on. Their exportation needs
special permit issued by the State Department! Of course that kind of legislation
is schizophrenic. Since the program is lawfully in the hands of millions of
users in the United States and can be downloaded to a single floppy disc or
to the hard disc of a laptop, not to mention the Internet, there is no way
it can be restricted within the geographical boundaries of this country. As
far as Zimmermann has said, “it is as if one were trying to ban the New
York Times export, or to lay an embargo on the wind…” The case
is being under preliminary investigation…
Seemingly, this dispute about cryptography that has broken out in the USA
might look like… “an exercise in democracy”, but in other
countries, possessing “Pretty Good Privacy” is a matter of life
and death. The organizations for the protection of human rights in Salvador
and Guatemala have been teaching their members how to use them. Secret services
in these countries are pretty serious when doing their job. Amnesty International
encodes all its messages in PGP to protect its agents in authoritative regimes. “In
case a dictatorship imposes its rule, all democrats from the Baltic to Siberia
shall be able to freely communicate with the help of the PGP. We do thank you” a
Latvian wrote to Zimmerman when the August 1991 coup broke out in Moscow.
