Editing History of cryptography (section)

===Cryptography politics===
The public developments of the 1970s broke the near monopoly on high quality cryptography held by government organizations (see S Levy's ''Crypto'' for a journalistic account of some of the policy controversy of the time in the US). For the first time ever, those outside government organizations had access to cryptography not readily breakable by anyone (including governments). Considerable controversy, and conflict, both public and private, began more or less immediately, sometimes called the [[crypto wars]]. They have not yet subsided. In many countries, for example, [[export of cryptography]] is subject to restrictions. Until 1996 export from the U.S. of cryptography using keys longer than 40 bits (too small to be very secure against a knowledgeable attacker) was sharply limited. As recently as 2004, former [[FBI]] Director [[Louis Freeh]], testifying before the [[9/11 Commission]], called for new laws against public use of encryption.

One of the most significant people favoring strong encryption for public use was [[Phil Zimmermann]]. He wrote and then in 1991 released [[Pretty Good Privacy|PGP]] (Pretty Good Privacy), a very high quality [[crypto system]]. He distributed a freeware version of PGP when he felt threatened by legislation then under consideration by the US Government that would require backdoors to be included in all cryptographic products developed within the US. His system was released worldwide shortly after he released it in the US, and that began a long criminal investigation of him by the [[US Department of Justice]] (DOJ) for the alleged violation of export restrictions.  The DOJ eventually dropped its case against Zimmermann, and the freeware distribution of PGP has continued around the world. PGP even eventually became an open [[IETF|Internet]] standard (RFC 2440 or [[OpenPGP]]).