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10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Phil Zimmermann.md
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@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ created: 2026-06-20
updated: 2026-06-20
---
Philip R. Zimmermann (born February 12, 1954, in Camden, New Jersey) is an American software engineer and privacy activist who wrote [[Pretty Good Privacy]] and published it for free on the internet in 1991. PGP's spread beyond the United States made him the subject of a three-year federal criminal investigation into whether he had illegally exported a munition, an inquiry the government closed without charges in 1996. He later founded PGP Inc., worked on encrypted internet telephony with the ZRTP protocol and the Zfone software, and cofounded the secure-communications company Silent Circle. He was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012.[^1][^2]
Philip R. Zimmermann (born February 12, 1954, in Camden, [[New Jersey]]) is an American software engineer and privacy activist who wrote [[Pretty Good Privacy]] and published it for free on the internet in 1991. PGP's spread beyond the United States made him the subject of a three-year federal criminal investigation into whether he had illegally exported a munition, an inquiry the government closed without charges in 1996. He later founded PGP Inc., worked on encrypted internet telephony with the ZRTP protocol and the Zfone software, and cofounded the secure-communications company Silent Circle. He was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012.[^1][^2]
### Background and the Release of PGP
@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ He wrote that he was prompted to release the software by Senate Bill 266 of 1991
### The Criminal Investigation
Because PGP traveled overseas almost immediately, it fell under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which classified strong cryptographic software as a munition that could not be exported without a license. The United States Customs Service opened a criminal investigation in 1993, run out of the office of the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California, into whether Zimmermann had violated the export controls when PGP appeared abroad. The case made him the most prominent individual target of what became known as the crypto wars, and for three years he faced the possibility of indictment for exporting a weapon.[^1][^2]
Because PGP traveled overseas almost immediately, it fell under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which classified strong cryptographic software as a munition that could not be exported without a license. The [[United States Customs Service]] opened a criminal investigation in 1993, run out of the office of the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California, into whether Zimmermann had violated the export controls when PGP appeared abroad. The case made him the most prominent individual target of what became known as the crypto wars, and for three years he faced the possibility of indictment for exporting a weapon.[^1][^2]
Zimmermann and his supporters answered with a First Amendment argument that source code is constitutionally protected speech. In 1995 the MIT Press published the complete PGP source code as a printed book set in an optical-character-recognition font, so that it could be exported legally as a book, scanned abroad, and recompiled, a maneuver designed to test whether the government would treat the printed word as a munition. The United States Attorney's office declined to prosecute and the investigation closed in January 1996. Zimmermann received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award and the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design in 1995, and the Louis Brandeis Award from Privacy International in 1999.[^5][^2]