Seminar tomorrow in Cambridge by Phil Zimmermann

[Ross Anderson]

Phil Zimmermann will be in Cambridge tomorrow and giving a talk, as
below.

Ross

Title:  "A conversation with Phil Zimmermann"

Date: Thursday April 30 2009

Location: Computer Laboratory, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FD

Abstract:

Phil Zimmermann is a veteran of the crypto wars of the 1990s, when
governments tried to ban and then to control cryptography. After he
wrote Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), which he made available online in
1991, he was arraigned before a grand jury on suspicion of violating
export-control laws. PGP became the most widely-used encryption
program in the world and the US government dropped its case in 1996. 
That attempt to control crypto petered out during the dotcom boom 
and was formally abandoned by Al Gore during the 2000 election.

But the surveillance state has constantly reinvented itself, from the
illegal wiretapping of US citizens under George W. Bush to the
proliferation of CCTV cameras in Britain and - now - the Interception
Modernisation Program.

This rising tide of surveillance since 9/11 brought Phil back into the
business of crypto activism with Zfone, a secure VOIP program.

This meeting will be structured not so much as a lecture but a
conversation, which will range over the technology and policy of
crypto wars old and new.

Zfone is at http://www.zfone.com
Phil's bio is at http://www.philzimmermann.com