Why this Kafkaesque treatment? Because many in the U.S. national security establishment hate Phil Zimmermann’s guts. He came up with Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP for short—a snoop-resistant way of transmitting e-mail over the Internet and other networks. Zimmermann loathes snoops and jackboots. Clearly he was not in the former communist Europe to subvert democracies; in fact, he was telling people how encryption[6.1] could help preserve their freedom. “I don’t have to explain to Eastern Europe,” he said, “why it is important for their governments not to get too powerful.”[6.2] This dictator-proofing helped win Phil Zimmermann a “Pioneer Award” from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the civil liberties group, which praised him for creating “a worldwide standard for e-mail encryption.” Zimmermann, however, as the Net’s many libertarians are quick to note, may end up in jail for allegedly having violated an American export law that carries penalties as high as a decade in prison and a million-dollar fine. The Feds treat PGP-style software as a weapon just like Stealth bombers, ballistic missiles, and nuclear warheads. And some Washington bureaucrats hate the idea of such a privacy protector in the hands of too many civilians who are not, well, Washington bureaucrats. Even if the Feds don’t indict and convict Zimmermann, the U.S. government has already done its share of bullying here. The U.S. Constitution forbids prosecutors from dragging Zimmermann into an overlit room and interrogating him without a lawyer present. Tell that to Washington, however. Although the law bans the export rather than the import of powerful encryption software, customs agents at Dulles Airport, eager for any excuse they could find, quizzed Zimmermann when he _returned_ from Eastern Europe. An oft-zealous enemy of privacy, the Clinton Administration has even promoted the manufacture of encryption devices that would let Feds listen in on supposedly confidential phone calls. Washington is also spending billions of tax dollars to make telephone lines more susceptible to tapping. Zimmermann, meanwhile, has been working on a phone-style piece of software. Used on the right computer with a $50 sound card and a $7 microphone, it would let people speak securely over the Internet or ordinary phone lines. Bill Clinton’s snoops must love Zimmermann about as much as they enjoy static during wiretaps. Here’s a man who they fear could break the connection altogether. Many in Washington, especially FBI Director Louis Freeh, would love to see unauthorized encryption banned entirely, the real issue here. And Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa has proposed to make it a crime to distribute scrambling programs by way of international nets if the Feds lacked the electronic keys to defeat them. The Grassley measure would even ban some software now classified as exportable. Like it or not, however, Washington no longer can control the fate of industrial-strength encryption.