I read with a great deal of concern the article the Washington Post article of September 21st that described PGP creator Phil Zimmerman's feelings of guilt over how his open source encryption software might have been used by the September 11th terrorists. Zimmerman is quoted as saying that "The intellectual side of me is satisfied with the decision, but the pain that we all feel because of all the deaths mixes with this... It has been a horrific few days."

On the 22nd, I wrote Phil and told him he should be proud of PGP and the good it has done the world. I wrote, in part:

I work for an international development agency... An old friend of mine is a Columbian who grew up in Canada but wanted to return home to participate in a non-political rural development project. In the course of his work, his agency had to contact rebels who controlled the part of the region in which the project was located. Several months later a list started circulating among Columbian aid workers, a list of those targeted for death and torture because they "cooperated" with the rebels. A rightist paramilitary had intercepted the agency's email. People had thought their Hotmail accounts were secure, and they weren't. My friend's name wasn't on the list, but he left Columbia immediately, and the project he was working on evaporated. If the group had used PGP, they would have been safer, and perhaps the project would have succeeded.

In these emotional times, we in the crypto community find ourselves having to defend our technology from well-intentioned but misguided efforts by politicians to impose new regulations on the use of strong cryptography. I do not want to give ammunition to these efforts by appearing to cave in on my principles. I think the article correctly showed that I'm not an ideologue when faced with a tragedy of this magnitude. Did I re-examine my principles in the wake of this tragedy? Of course I did. But the outcome of this re-examination was the same as it was during the years of public debate, that strong cryptography does more good for a democratic society than harm, even if it can be used by terrorists. Read my lips: I have no regrets about developing PGP.