The Washington Post

To Attacks' Toll Add a Programmer's Grief

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 21, 2001; Page E01


The tears have come in the kitchen, the car and the shower, too.

Like many Americans, Phil Zimmermann, a stocky, 47-year-old
computer programmer, has been crying every day since last week's
terrorist attacks. He has been overwhelmed with feelings of guilt.

Zimmermann is the inventor of a computer program called Pretty Good
Privacy, or PGP. He posted the tool for free on the Internet 10
years ago; it was the first to allow ordinary people to encrypt
messages so only those with a "key" could read them. No government
or law enforcement agency has been able to get in.

People warned Zimmermann back then that he could be putting
powerful technology into the wrong hands. He knew that was
theoretically possible, but he also knew that the program could do
good: His work created a way for people in oppressed countries to
communicate without fear of retribution.

Now the government is investigating whether Zimmermann's technology
or another scrambler was used by the hijackers to coordinate last
week's attacks, and U.S. lawmakers are calling for new restrictions
on the use and distribution of the technology.

Zimmermann and other fathers of encryption say it may be too late,
given that the technology has spread all over the world.

In a telephone interview from his home in Burlingame, Calif.,
Zimmermann said he doesn't regret posting the encryption program on
the Internet. Yet he has trouble dealing with the reality that his
software was likely used for evil.

"The intellectual side of me is satisfied with the decision, but
the pain that we all feel because of all the deaths mixes with
this," he said. "It has been a horrific few days."

Contributing to that is the hate e-mail he got Sunday night.

It began, "Phil -- I hope you can sleep at night with the blood of
5,000 people on your hands." PGP has become a "weapon of war," the
e-mail continued, leveling the playing field between powerful
countries like the United States and "zealots."

Zimmermann read the words over and over again the next day, trying
to think of a way to respond. But in the end, the man who is known
in the technology world for his rousing speeches and meticulous
debates didn't know what to say.

"He raises some points that many people are raising right now,
namely that terrorists can use the technology," Zimmermann said
quietly. "But it overlooks the strong need for good crypto."

The open policy the United States has today toward encryption arose
out of years of debate in the 1990s. Zimmermann was among the most
prominent figures in the discussions, fighting against a government
that threatened to jail him for posting his technologies online. He
also launched a campaign to convince Congress to ease restrictions
on exporting the technology to other countries. He won on both
accounts.

Zimmermann and other technologists now struggle with the Catch-22
that encryption presents. If governments are given a backdoor or a
master key to the encryption, as lawmakers like Sen. Judd Gregg
(R-N.H.) have suggested, it would defeat the purpose of the
technology.

It would cause problems, for instance, for a rebel fighter in
Kosovo, whose brother e-mailed Zimmermann to tell him the
technology was being used to relay messages from command center to
command center, eliminating the need for human couriers.

Another encryption pioneer, Matt Blaze, said there are also
practical reasons why the technology shouldn't be restricted. "I am
extremely doubtful that this could be done without weakening
computer systems, and the costs would be absolutely staggering,"
said Blaze, a researcher at AT&T Labs.

Then there are the civil liberties questions.

"We should be careful not to make any rash decisions in the heat of
the moment" that could have a negative impact on privacy, human
rights and First Amendment freedoms for years to come, Zimmermann
said.


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