There was a moment of weird-ness late last month in Burlingame, Calif., when a 41-year-old computer programmer, looking slightly uncomfortable in a tailored suit, ambled up to a podium to accept the coveted Pioneer award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "I think it's ironic," said Phil Zimmermann, "that the thing I'm being honored for is the. same thing that Ⅱ might be indicted for." For two years, a federal prosecutor in San Jose has been investigating Zimmermann for violating export regulations in distribu'ting what is probably the world's most popular software for protecting elec-tronic communications. People who use his Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) program—for which he charges no fee—regard the Boulder, Colo., father of two as a hero, the person who has granted them the freedom, as he puts it, "to whisper something in someone's ear a thousand miles away." But the U.S. government sees the global proliferation of PGP and similar programs as a menace—and, maybe, a crime. Therein lie the contradictions and frustrations of the crypto war, one of the most contentious struggles of the Information Age.
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