Zimmerman, Phil

The inventor of “Pretty Good Privacy” or “PGP,” an encryption program distributed worldwide to be used by the average computer user. Zimmerman’s greatest obstacle in marketing his security products involved an attempt by the U.S. government to prosecute him for the illegal export of sophisticated encryption algorithms. At the time of the charges brought against Zimmerman, only weak encryption algorithms were permitted to be exported from the U.S. Zimmerman spent three years fighting the government, and eventually, the charges were dropped. His home page can be found at: http://www. philzimmermann.com/EN/background/index.html.

See Also: Computer; Encryption or Encipher; Pretty Good Privacy (PGP); Security.