By 1991 the patent issue wasn’t the only one dogging Zimmermann. The U.S. Senate was considering a law that would in effect ban Fedproof encryption here in the United States and potentially prevent him from selling the software on which he had been toiling for years now. Washington already forbade export of encryption abroad. The Cold War was winding down, but export controls were still draconian. Hadn’t we won World War II because our technology was better, because we had had nukes, because we could even snoop on secret code transmissions from the enemy? The export laws and the Pentagon put strong encryption equipment in the same category as munitions. But what about at home? Not surprisingly, the FBI didn’t want the wrong technology to fall into the hands of dope rings, Mafiosi, and others planning or coordinating crimes. In 1991, then, perhaps at the Bureau’s request, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware inserted the following language into an omnibus crime bill: “It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law.” A Senate staffer assured civil libertarians that the measure would not ban strong encryption. Many disagreed. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, library groups, academics, and industry managed to get Washington to drop the offending language. By then PGP was all over the Net. Smart lobbying, not the software, killed the Biden plan. But Zimmermann’s work was still a good, sound precaution against a relapse. Via bulletin boards and the Internet, a free version was circulating from one end of Planet Earth to the other, having gone overseas within a day of its release. In Zimmermann’s words, it spread “like thousands of dandelion seeds blowing in the wind.” PGP reached Russia and scores of other countries. It wasn’t like nuclear weapons or mini-computers; you couldn’t stop a ship from loading or search the luggage of the suspicious. No, PGP just moved silently over the wires as hackers throughout the world shared Zimmermann’s craft. The way Zimmermann told it, however, he had not broken any of the export laws. And others supported him. Jim Warren, founder of _InfoWorld_ and a software man respected for his civic activism on the Net, would later recall that Zimmermann gave PGP to an acquaintance named Kelly Goen, who “studiously” limited the uploads to electronic bulletin boards and Internet sites within the United States. Warren was aware of the uploading process while it happened. “The whole idea was to provide it to _Americans_,” he would remember, “so Americans could have personal privacy and security” in case the U.S. Senate tried to bottle up decent encryption.[6.17]