Philip Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the
most widely used email encryption software in the world. He was the
first to make asymmetric, or public key, encryption software easily
available to all. This led the US Customs to make him the target of a
three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US
export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP
spread all around the world following its 1991 publication on the
Internet as freeware. After the government dropped its case without
indictment in early 1996, Zimmermann founded PGP Inc. That company was
acquired by Network Associates (NAI) in December 1997, where he stayed
on for three years as a Senior Fellow. In 2002, PGP was acquired from
NAI by a new company called PGP Corporation, which Zimmermann now
serves as special advisor and consultant. Zimmermann is also a fellow
at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.