Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: BitShuffle on July 01, 2011, 12:58 am

Title: Philip Zimmerman
Post by: BitShuffle on July 01, 2011, 12:58 am

Just so you young whipper-snappers know, Philip Zimmerman first developed PGP (Pretty Good Privacy, and the basis for GPG).  He then released the source code, and put it all on the net.

The spooks in Washington, DC went bonkers.

For 3 years, he was living under the threat of prosecution because releasing such good encryption technology to the world was considered an act of treason.  Apparently, they thought that he had exported "restricted technology".

If you enjoy Bitcoin (which uses public-key encryption) and Tor (which uses public-key encryption), the next time you take a toke, tip your hat to Philip and thank him for unleashing such liberating technology upon the world for free.

- Bit

Title: Re: Philip Zimmerman
Post by: RickyRango on July 01, 2011, 02:25 am

Yeah he's one of the heroes of this age.  :)

Title: Re: Philip Zimmerman
Post by: k1ngk0ng on July 01, 2011, 10:57 am

thanks for the reminder!
back in the days I heard stories that the code was smuggled out of the US not as a normal data transfer or on a normal storage media, but they printed a whole book with the code. but I guess that's just an urban legend hehe

Title: Re: Philip Zimmerman
Post by: Tokin' Minority on July 01, 2011, 12:35 pm

I don't think that was just an urban legend. Once anything gets printed in book form, the First Amendment kicks in, so there was little the Fed could do about it. This is what also happened with the DeCSS code, people started printing it, putting it on shirts, making a song with the source code as the lyrics, etc.

Title: Re: Philip Zimmerman
Post by: BitShuffle on July 01, 2011, 01:15 pm

Quote from: k1ngk0ng on July 01, 2011, 10:57 am

thanks for the reminder!
back in the days I heard stories that the code was smuggled out of the US not as a normal data transfer or on a normal storage media, but they printed a whole book with the code. but I guess that's just an urban legend hehe

It was back in the day where they still used semaphore flags for a few hops of the Internet.

Title: Re: Philip Zimmerman
Post by: DigitalAlch on July 01, 2011, 08:26 pm

It is no rumor see:
PGP & GPG - Email For The Practical Paranoid (2006)

HE is also the creator of a more secure alternative to skype.
http://zfoneproject.com/

Peace,
DigitalAlch

Title: Re: Philip Zimmerman
Post by: k1ngk0ng on July 03, 2011, 11:28 pm

haha awesome!
thanks for the info, I never actually looked it up :)

Title: Re: Philip Zimmerman
Post by: peaceloveharmony on July 03, 2011, 11:53 pm

Dont forget to give some probs to Rivest,Shamir and Adleman. They probably did much more for the development of PGP than Zimmerman.

And Neal Koblitz, the great person behind the cryptography algorithm used in Bitcoins.