Free Knowledge Culture Calendar/August 1
Today in 1996 the Internet Engineering Task Force standardized the eMail encryption scheme of the Pretty Good Privacy software. The publication of PGP had put strong cryptography into the hands of ordinary people for the first time. Since publication on the Internet was criminalized under U.S. export restrictions for weapons, it had to be exported in book form for the international market (with no viable OCR software yet..). There was a decade of policy debate for free access to strong cryptography for everyone, known as the (first) Crypto Wars. Although the system is clearly showing its age and difficult to use securely by today’s standards, no one has yet managed to establish a better system for eMail encryption.