INVITATION TO CYBERSECURITY 288 puter network bulletin board illegal because it could then be accessed by people in different countries—a form of exporting. Figure 10.2 Rosa Parks arrest police report. Meanwhile, many believed that people had a right to protect their computer network communications from eavesdropping, and argued that preventing people from using cryptography was unethical. Phil Zimmermann was a proponent of this view, and he created free software to encrypt and authenticate digital communications. He called his software Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and made it available online in 1991, violating ITAR. He faced a serious criminal investigation but was never charged with a crime. Zimmerman became a cult hero for his actions. Some of his supporters made shirts with the RSA encryption algorithm printed on them as a form of protest, pointing out the absurdity that a shirt then somehow qualified as an export-controlled munition (see Figure 10.3). The export restrictions around computer cryptography were eliminated in the late 1990s, but the crypto wars have never completely been resolved. The United States government has an uncomfortable relationship with computer cryptography, at times arguing that it is a threat to national security and hampers criminal investigations. Many technologists, on the other hand, point out its benefits to individuals and organizations, the futility of trying to regulate it, and the dangers of incorporating cryptographic backdoors into cryptosystems. The idea of a cryptographic backdoor is that cryptosystems would include
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