Philip Zimmermann and 'Guilt' Over PGP

Philip R. Zimmermann, creator of PGP, was quoted in a recent Washington Post article as saying he has been "overwhelmed with feelings of guilt" about the use of PGP by suspected terrorists. Zimmermann says the story was not entirely accurate, and has written a response to it (below) that he hopes will clear things up. He has also consented to a Slashdot interview, so please post any questions you have for him. As usual, we'll send 10 of the highest-moderated ones to Zimmermann by email, and post his replies verbatim as soon as we get them back.

No Regrets About Developing PGP

The Friday September 21st Washington Post carried an article by Ariana Cha that I feel misrepresents my views on the role of PGP encryption software in the September 11th terrorist attacks. She interviewed me on Monday September 17th, and we talked about how I felt about the possibility that the terrorists might have used PGP in planning their attack. The article states that as the inventor of PGP, I was "overwhelmed with feelings of guilt". I never implied that in the interview, and specifically went out of my way to emphasize to her that that was not the case, and made her repeat back to me this point so that she would not get it wrong in the article. This misrepresentation is serious, because it implies that under the duress of terrorism I have changed my principles on the importance of cryptography for protecting privacy and civil liberties in the information age.

Because of the political sensitivity of how my views were to be expressed, Ms. Cha read to me most of the article by phone before she submitted it to her editors, and the article had no such statement or implication when she read it to me. The article that appeared in the Post was significantly shorter than the original, and had the abovementioned crucial change in wording. I can only speculate that her editors must have taken some inappropriate liberties in abbreviating my feelings to such an inaccurate soundbite.

In the interview six days after the attack, we talked about the fact that I had cried over the heartbreaking tragedy, as everyone else did. But the tears were not because of guilt over the fact that I developed PGP, they were over the human tragedy of it all. I also told her about some hate mail I received that blamed me for developing a technology that could be used by terrorists. I told her that I felt bad about the possibility of terrorists using PGP, but that I also felt that this was outweighed by the fact that PGP was a tool for human rights around the world, which was my original intent in developing it ten years ago. It appears that this nuance of reasoning was lost on someone at the Washington Post. I imagine this may be caused by this newspaper's staff being stretched to their limits last week.

In these emotional times, we in the crypto community find ourselves having to defend our technology from well-intentioned but misguided efforts by politicians to impose new regulations on the use of strong cryptography. I do not want to give ammunition to these efforts by appearing to cave in on my principles. I think the article correctly showed that I'm not an ideologue when faced with a tragedy of this magnitude. Did I re-examine my principles in the wake of this tragedy? Of course I did. But the outcome of this re-examination was the same as it was during the years of public debate, that strong cryptography does more good for a democratic society than harm, even if it can be used by terrorists. Read my lips: I have no regrets about developing PGP.

The question of whether strong cryptography should be restricted by the government was debated all through the 1990's. This debate had the participation of the White House, the NSA, the FBI, the courts, the Congress, the computer industry, civilian academia, and the press. This debate fully took into account the question of terrorists using strong crypto, and in fact, that was one of the core issues of the debate. Nonetheless, society's collective decision (over the FBI's objections) was that on the whole, we would be better off with strong crypto, unencumbered with government back doors. The export controls were lifted and no domestic controls were imposed. I feel this was a good decision, because we took the time and had such broad expert participation. Under the present emotional pressure, if we make a rash decision to reverse such a careful decision, it will only lead to terrible mistakes that will not only hurt our democracy, but will also increase the vulnerability of our national information infrastructure.

PGP users should rest assured that I would still not acquiesce to any back doors in PGP.

It is noteworthy that I had only received a single piece of hate mail on this subject. Because of all the press interviews I was dealing with, I did not have time to quietly compose a carefully worded reply to the hate mail, so I did not send a reply at all. After the article appeared, I received hundreds of supportive emails, flooding in at two or three per minute on the day of the article.

I have always enjoyed good relations with the press over the past decade, especially with the Washington Post. I'm sure they will get it right next time.

The article in question appears at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1234-2001Sep20.html

-Philip Zimmermann
24 September 2001

(This letter may be widely circulated)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 7.0.3

iQA/AwUBO69F2sdGNjmy13leEQIn+QCg2DjDeyibtRe61tUSplSAobdzAqEAoOMF ir3lRc4c1D/0Mmmv/JtP/E73 =HmRO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Tools are never evil

Only their users. And remember, good and evil are relative. Not everybody thinks like you do.

Re:But there is

"Some Christians are morally bankrupt" does not imply "All Christians are morally bankrupt". It is just that sort of misguided reasoning that leads Islamic terrorists to justify killing innocent Americans and Americans to justify killing innocent Arabs, Pakistanis...

Re:But there is

As a disclaimer: The people who led the Crusades were not right in what they did.

That said I wonder why everyone seems to forget that it was the Arabs that invaded Palistine first and killed innocent Christians and Jews in the name of Islam, thus one of the main reasons for the Crusades...

I also wonder why no one can seem to forget an event that happened hundreds of years ago and that no one alive today (Muslim, Christian, or Jew) is responsible for it. Just because someone did something in the name of someone's god doesn't mean that the religion or the god advocate it. It was true in the time of the Crusdes (at least the God part, or Allah on the Islam side if you will) and its true now with this terrorist attack.

Do you have a right to speak privately?

Not only did Catholics support the Crusades [rhodes.edu], they enthusiastically supported them. That outbreak of mental illness lasted from 1095 A.D. to 1291; it was not an isolated circumstance. During that time Europeans traveled to Arab lands to kill them. At that time almost all Christians were Catholic.

Many people don't understand the significance of the Crusades, which happened a long time ago. The significance is that the moral teaching of the Christians did not prevent them from designing and participating in a killing rampage.

The Crusades were not the only Christian killing rampage. The Spanish Inquisition was another outbreak of craziness.

The moral teachings of the Christians have not changed significantly since the Crusades. Arabs ask themselves, "What would prevent Christians from being part of another killing rampage?" That's why the crusades have significance in modern thinking. It is easy to understand that when President Bush talked about a crusade in a speech to the entire nation of the U.S., while at the same time declaring "war", Arabs became anxious.

It is remarkable how quickly the discussion of terrorism became off-topic. People are blaming PGP!!! Do you have a right to speak to your wife in private, with no interference or listening from the government? If you do have this right, then you have a right to use PGP. Your wife may be in another country, and PGP is a way of being sure you speak only to her. If you don't have this right, then the government can legally force its way into anything you say to your wife.

The primary reason for the violence seems to be corruption in secret agencies of the U.S. government like the CIA. For example, the CIA trained Osama bin Laden. If there is more trouble, the CIA receives more funding. So the CIA, at least unconsciously, wants more trouble.

Israel receives an astounding $905 per year from the U.S. government for every man, woman and child who lives there. A large part of that money is spent on weapons bought from the United States. Senators in the U.S. who represent the states with weapons manufacturers have lobbied to continue giving money to Israel. The U.S. weapons manufacturers also sell weapons to the Arabs.

I've tried to pull together information about these issues: What should be the Response to Violence? [hevanet.com].

The U.S. has bombed 14 countries in the last 30 years, killing about 3,000,000 people. Yet Phil Zimmermann gets hassled for causing problems!!! Duh!

Re:Tools are never evil

So our society has determined that slavery is wrong for everybody.

So, it's a relative absolute.

You really shouldn't be arguing in this, you're in over your head. You can't simply change the definition of absolute to suit yourself. Absolute morals can NOT exist without religion. If you're saying morals are absolute, you're saying that there's a universal law which mandates it, the only way that's possible is if there's a god doing the mandating.

Now, I know you're not saying there's a universal law, but this means you're not talking about absolute morals, even if you think you are. If a society has decided something, then it wasn't absolute.

What you're talking about is strictly enforced relative morals. Society X has decided that slavery is bad, and there are no exceptions. Only the last part is absolute, the first part is relative.

Furthermore, these morals of our society aren't even enforced absolutely. Murder is wrong, except when a cop shoots a lawbreaker, or you execute a criminal, etc. Slavery is wrong, except when you put prisoners to work. And it's not different just because they're criminals. Absolute in this sense means 100%, no exceptions. If there are exceptions, it's not absolute.

You were closer with your "laws of physics" idea, than with the point you're trying to make.

Re:Tools are never evil

No! Tools are definitely evil! The Wright brothers should have ben executed immediately for inventing their flying building-knocker-down contraption!

Re:Name `PGP`

Maybe "Envelope" would be a better product name.

In fact, for this public debate, I think that even "encryption" is a bad term to use. It sounds cryptical in the most literal sense, and the average user (or politician) doesn't understand it, so it must be something scary.

While I see a lot of people who discuss abolishing "secure email transmission" (i.e. encrypted mail), I have seen very few people who would demand backdors in "Secure Socket Layer" (i.e. encrypted HTTP) or "secure online banking" (i.e. encrypted financial transactions). The main difference between the three is that in the case of email transmission, people usually use the term "encrypted", while in the latter cases, the buzzword is "security."

If you want to talk with average people, talk about secure communication, not about encrypted communication. Politicians will have a much harder time abolishing security than abolishing encryption.

The Washington Post

We who live in the D.C. area are very familiar with the Post's penchant for "manufacturing" stories where none exist. Mr. Zimmerman unfortunately was the party on the receiving end of the editorial foul play in this particular case.

As a community, we should recognize that the Post as well as other news media outlets are NOT in their line of work to provide complete and unbiased coverage of events. They are in business to make MONEY, and that is a goal that creates in and of itself conflict of interest with reporting the truth in most (if not all) cases.

I wish the readership of the Post was going to be privy to Mr. Zimmerman's clarifications in the same way we /.ers are.

Future of pgp

Although I don't use pgp on a daily basis I do occasionally use it and wish that more businesses supported it for use in email. I would much rather encrypt personal information being sent to a company but they don't support it.

Is there any plans for improving pgp's ability to incorporate itself into email programs and other forms of internet communications that will make it easier for companies and end users to use?

Thanks Phil

I was very skeptical of that article. My question: Has the Washington Post apologized or printed a correction? Better yet, have they offered to run your comment as an op-ed? They really should.

Anti-Empowerment == Anti-Liberty

PGP empowers people to exchange secrets. Computers empower people to run flight simulators and much else. The internet empowers people to meet each other, organize, and exchange data. All are used for great good, and some evil. One of the things that threaten government and large industry the most is the fact that these technologies empower the individual in a way that only government and industry were empowered before. They would like to use the excuse that these technologies can be used for crime to remove them from everybody's hands.

What strikes me about this tragic disaster is the way government is targeting technologies that are not connected with the crime, simply because the implication that they could be used is there, using the need to protect the people as a hollow justification to remove our rights.

Bruce

To what point should you go, and would it help?

I'm sorry to hear about the misrepresentation. I'm sure as well that they will do better next time. It's very important that your reaction to this mistake wasn't anger, which is what I'd have expected of a lot of people. Anyway, here's my question:

To what point would you go with PGP? For example, if it were outlawed, or you considered your life to be threatened through some government's outlawing of it, would you stop working with it, or supporting strong crypto? And if you would actually "go underground" if you sincerely believed that it would help people's freedom, do you think it would matter?

What I mean is... do you think the internet(email, freenet, www, etc) could still be seen as a place where people can somehow communicate and share information, even under a regime that tried hard to stop that information being shared?

Clarification Por Favor?

Couple honest questions I would like to ask within this thread for clarification on this issue?

1. What are the uses of cryptography as a "Human Rights Tool"?

2. If in fact tools such as PGP are used by terrorists, how do governments protect against this?

Any information provided would be greatly appreciated.

Re:Clarification Por Favor?

This is probably a troll, so mod me down for biting.

1. What are the uses of cryptography as a "Human Rights Tool"?

Okay, say you live in China, where the government is known to imprison members of certain religous groups using rather spurious claims that these groups are 'terrorist groups'. You've heard of the Faulan Gaun (sp?).

How else do you meet and exchange information and be free in your religion (which the U.S. considers a 'human right') without the aid of data encryption. There are a few ways to do it, but data encryption is the safest and fastest way to do so.

By the same token, look at Amnesty International's website. You won't be able to in China, or other certain countries, unless you use a proxy that bypasses the national filtering. Then, you won't be able to do it safely unless unless your connection to that proxy is encrypted so that you can't be spied upon. Safeweb rocks for surfing pr0n at work. It is essential tool for individuals in China who want to learn about the world around them without seeing it filtered through the prejudices of the Communist Party.

One last example. Say you are an Amnesty International worker in a country where your work is only barely tolerated, like Afghanistan. If you're smart, you'll hide evidences of human rights abuse behind strong encryption so that the collection of that evidence can't be used against you by a hostile court. Bescrypt is the first tool that comes to mind, but I know that there are equally good open source tools that will do the same job.

I could go on and on. Remember that these 'belligerant' governments aren't the only governments that try to violate human rights. The U.S. government will do it if they can get away with it. You've heard of Echelon? Carnivore? These privacy invading tools are completely useless in the face of 2048-bit strength DSS encryption, which is the default key-length in PGP.

Kevin Mitnick's laptop, which is still in posession of the Fed, has *yet* to yeild up any of his secrets that could be used against him because the data inside was encrypted. I think many /.ers feel like Kevin's rights were repeatedly violated. The data in his laptop cannot be used against him to further violate his rights after he's finally out and about to be able to work again.

Encryption is a wondrous power. Let's *not* give it up just because it rubs LEO's the wrong way. The police already have enough power to solve even the most heinous of crimes, just as they are *currently* doing in the WTC attack. Let's not give them more than they need.

Criminalization of Encryption

The idea is seriously being canvassed in the UK, of making it a criminal offence to send strongly encrypted material by email, or to put it up on a web page. Could such a law be enforced ?

Will US Government export restrictions help?

I'll admit I'm not extremely knowledgable about government regulation of encryption. But it seemed to me that previous US Governement crypto was basically focusing on controlling the exportation of 'strong' (large key?) encryption, not on the internal (by US citizens) use of encryption.

My question is, will export regulations help at all? By 'help', I mean 'accomplish what the US Government wants to happen', which I assume would be reducing the strength of encryption available outside the US. The only way I can see export regulations helping is if the large majority of R&D into encryption is done inside the US. Do you know how much work is done inside and/or outside the US in the field of encryption, and would cutting off US encryption research from the outside world (assuming that is possible via regulation) have a major impact on encryption available out of the US, or an impact on the field of encryption itself?

A Related Question

I wonder why the reporter didn't think to ask the CEO of Boeing [boeing.com] if he is tormented by feelings of guilt? After all, the attacks showed us that he makes his living selling giant flying bombs that Very Bad People can use to kill thousands of our people in one fell swoop. Surely he must agree that he and his company have blood on their hands, right?

Of course not. Boeing isn't responsible for this tragedy, and neither is Phil Zimmerman (and kudos to Phil for standing up and saying so). Boeing's aircraft have contributed immensely to our national economy by helping make easy commercial air travel possible. Strong crypto has contributed immensely to the economy by helping make the online world a safe, secure place to do business. Both have been misused by evil men to do a great wrong; but they are just tools, with no moral implications beyond those transferred to them through the hands of those who wield them. To place the blame anywhere else is to absolve the monsters behind the attack of the full weight of their crimes.

-- Jason Lefkowitz

Zimmermann should complain to the Post Ombudsman

Rather than just clarifying his views for the Slashdot audience, Zimmermann should bring this up with the Washington Post's ombudsman. [washingtonpost.com]

Situations like this are pretty much the reason the Post has an ombudsman.

As Zimmermann says, the Washington Post usually takes accuracy very seriously. I'm sure they will give this the attention it deserves.

PGP, secrets and authority.

Privacy of communication appears to be extremely important. My private conversations should only involve the persons intended to hear them, or many ideas might never be expressed.

Privacy for citizens carries much more weight than privacy for organizations. Government agents who wish secrecy can afford many levels of secrecy to ensure private communication. Political groups, like terrorists, can also hide their actions through secrecy. Removing secure communications from normal citizens in an attempt to discover political groups is horrible doomed to only remove private speach from the citizens.

There is, however, one divide where people are lost from this equation. Currently private communication requires money. PGP is not available to the vast majority of those under the poverty line. What, if anything, are you doing to bridge this gap?

Nice to have a veteran champion...

>PGP users should rest assured that I would still not acquiesce to any back doors in PGP.

It's really good to have a veteran with the possibility of being a champion for privacy issues. Afterall, we all know for a fact that Phil's willing to run the gauntlet in defense of what he thinks is right... I would think that's been proven.

I just hope it won't be necessary to go to the lengths that happened last time.

What WOULD you like to see done?

Greetings,
Thank you Phil for producing PGP, for standing up for what you really believe, and for re-evaluating your beliefs after this tragic event.
Given the use of techniques like steganography and Chaffing and Winnowing to hide messages with or without encryption, and the many ways of communicating without openly passing a message (codes, one time pads,...) laws on cryptography are obviously pointless as far as stopping terrorism is concerned.
So, What would you like to see being done? What measures do you think might be effective against terrorism?
I don't have any answers, but I haven't seen any that seem effective to me either.

Thanks,
Z.

question to mr. zimmermann ...

what, would you say, is the flaw to backdoor'd crypto and how would you explain this defect to someone who lacks a wide knowledge of computers, especially in light of recent events?

thanks, _f

Wow

This misquoting is absolutely incredible in scope. I've been afraid of being misquoted before, but this quite well takes the cake. The individual writing the article wanted to write ONE THING smacking about the crypto community and perhaps even programmers in general, and took the quotes WAY out of context AND pretty much just took sentences and cut out all the words that he needed.

This is like me saying

"So, if I get my girlfriend a cat, this is what she wants for Christmas?"

and being quoted as

"My girlfriend" "is" "a cat."

Quantum Cryptography

We all know that a working quantum computer will make the current algorithms obsolete. Thus, the following questions:

1. Do you think a quantum computer can be developed in secrecy?
2. If yes, how can we tell if our encryption needs to be changed?
3. What are your ideas for a "quantum PGP"?

Also, I would like to thank you for PGP. Indeed, it is making the world a better place, and to me it is even more apparent in light of recent events.

Kjetil (Keyid: 6A6A0BBC)

Keyrings are still to easy to read

The secret keyring in practically every implementation of PGP leaks information off the secret key ring.

Not the messages, but something that can comprimise the existance of the user.

The identities on the keyring can be listed without a passphrase.

This means that if you have a standard keyring with your personal ID and you are also "Chairman X" of the local committee for doing things the State does not like, if they obtain your keyring, they can show that you and "Chairman X" are most likely the same person.

All it takes is "pgp -kvv secring.pgp" and I can tell you all of the aliases and alternate identities that you use.

Currently, using multiple secret key rings is a pain. Most implemenations of PGP do not have the ability to add a master passphrase on the keyring.

BTW, people have been linked to their nyms by just this method. (Ask Carl Johnson. He was a canadian who spent time in an American jail because he said something through a nym that the government found threatening.)

Backdoors?

PGP users should rest assured that I would still not acquiesce to any back doors in PGP.

I seems to remember that, not too long ago, you quite publically left NAI (the owners of the PGP franchise) after they refused to open the source of PGP 7.blah to public scrutiny.

You also stated that you could only guarantee that version 7.slightly_lower_version_than_above was free of backdoors - in fact, you sign your open letter with version 7.0.3.

1. How do you reconcile these two, somewhat differing, views?
2. Which version(s) do you regard as "safe".
3. Why don't you run the latest version?


All the relevant versions and statements can be found in stories on /.

Totalitarian vs Individualist Morality

Encryption is among the least of a great many modern technologies by which those who are determined and intelligent and lucky can do great evil. At a time when our government admits it doesn't have nearly enough people who can even understand the languages those who've committed the most recent evil speak, concern with encryption seems particularly misplaced.

Greater individual power for evil requires greater individual conscience for good as counterbalance. Nuturing individual consciences on a vast scale requires analysis of what defeats individual conscience. The main threat to individual conscience is totalitarian ideology. The main method of totalitarian ideologies is to convince those who surrender their natural judgment to them that they are the straight and narrow path to some sort of heaven or utopia, and that their formulas must be adopted because the individual's own native sense of rightness and beauty is fundamentally flawed and cannot be trusted, so the first-hand knowledge of, for instance, the goodness of the female form should be renounced as delusional, while the evil of suicide bombing should be accepted as on the side of heaven.

The evil manifests in political and religious ideologies which (1) provide specific pseudo-rational formulas to replace individual thought while (2) providing images of some over-the-horizon heaven or worker's paradise to replace vision and the evidence of the eyes in the world.

In general, the tools of individual empowerment correlate with the development of individual conscience. What was shocking in the WTC case was that totalitarian drones were able to use some of those tools without shaking their totalitarian mindset. Despite that, if we limit the tools, we also limit the further advance and development of individual conscience, whose development in the larger picture is our only hope.

Rather, we might consider directly attacking what enables evil on this scale: the promulagation of simplistic formulas for and unreal images of heaven. Fundamentalist religion is the main reservoire of such conscience-obliterating evil, particularly since Communist ideology has lost most of its force, and the Thousand Year Reich been vanquished. Fundamentalism consists entirely of simplistic formulas meant to supplant the individual's own native sensibility, which it views as being corrupt by nature, coupled with patently absurd images of rewards beyond, which make up for the removal of motivation by the real rewards we naturally seek in this world - which are incompatible with atrocity.

Much of religion is quite compatible with conscience - but the problem is people of conscience generally hold to the formula of never criticizing other religions, even those variations whose leaders openly preach suicide bombing, as does, for instance, the highest-ranking Muslim cleric on the Gaza Strip.

Religion is finally a technology of social control, a way of subverting our natural coding. Our natural coding, as response to the WTC tragedy demonstrates, is strongly altrustic. Religion is a virus evolved and designed to override nature, and the more virulent forms can be identified by their explicit rejection and vilification of nature.

It is precisely to oppose the potential of religious totalitarianism - which is not a distant prospect when Falwell is a close friend of Bush - that encrption, among other technologies of individual empowerment, is most needed. And we must suspect that this, not the occassional convenience of encryption to terrorists who in any case can communicate in dialects we can barely translate, is the main motivation of those who'd remove such a tool.

Gutenberg

In a related story, Gutenberg was "overwhelmed by guilt" when he witnessed recent blatant fabrication of news by manipulative corporate editors. "It caused me to re-evaluate the whole idea....and cry over the heartbreaking tragedy," said the inventor of the surreptitious movable type technology that allowed the evil men to further their aims. "I was sent hate mail ... in the behalf of millions of people," he sobbed.

Question for Phil Zimmerman on realworld analogies

Do we need to come up with new analogies to explain the civil and privacy rights justification for encryption to politicians and the lay public?

In the past we've used envelopes and locks, but I think these fall short because the reason for encryption is to create a time delay to access sufficient to dissuade the smart and lazy opponent AND allow detection of the stupid but industrious ones.

I Like Your Hat!

[That would be the "Phil's Pretty Good Software" hat.]

Questions:

Do you see any reasonable chances for success for a truly free and open system of certification authorities that would enable large numbers of people to exchange ideas and money in a way they would trust and yet simultaneously permit them privacy and anonymity?

What is your opinion of Hailstorm?

Question for Phil

First off, hats off to a career that has been inspiring to us all. I know that I, for one, cried for joy on the day that cryptographic export was opened up.

Now, the question:

It is hard for the public to hear the message "crypto backdoors are bad" without associating it with an anarchist anti-gov't message.

First off, do you believe it is possible for the gov't to implement a crypto backdoor without "Bad Guys" getting into the backdoor and thereby compromising security?

Secondly, do you have any positive examples or anecdotes of why strong crypto is good for gov't, or at least not detrimental?

Thanks, and once again congrats.