Why I Wrote PGP (1991, revised 1999)

113 points47 comments2 days ago
BeetleB

> In 2013, an article on "Zimmermann's Law" quoted Phil Zimmermann as saying "The natural flow of technology tends to move in the direction of making surveillance easier"

tait

I remember joking with a professor that he should not use PGP for email privacy because it would make his content more of a target.

That one turned out to be true…

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-...

adastra22

A well-intentioned ideal from a bygone era.

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dylan604

The biggest issue of using PGP was using PGP. You were pretty nerdy to be on the internet back then, but even then using PGP was beyond what the majority of people wanted to do. Exchanging keys was problematic. Writing text in one app, encrypting in another app, copying encrypted back to an email was just tiresome.

I'm still glad that it existed as its mere existence seems to have pushed things in the right direction as far as protecting everyone's ability to use encryption if they chose. It just never became the panacea it was envisioned to be.

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gjvc

I learned C from PGP

jpnichols01

so wild, but cool to see