“The Samaritans,” announced a Usenet post, “have always taken the confidentiality of callers extremely seriously. Indeed the most frequently asked question within the movement about our e-mail service is, ‘What about confidentiality?’” Surely, in an era when more and more communications happened to be electronic, it would be folly to deny reliable encryption to the Samaritans and the people they helped. Although the Samaritans felt more confidence about the security of unprotected e-mail than did Father Morton, they understood an important truth: _perceptions_ mattered as much as anything. If their correspondents lacked faith in the confidentiality of e-mail, they couldn’t write as freely. And, as I saw it, they might not be as open to rescue. If Washington banned PGP, if it replaced it with an inferior, Clipperish arrangement, the Samaritans just might not be as successful as with truly secure encryption. Privacy wasn’t just for confessions and for suicide prevention. It was also for teenagers. Donna—she supplied her real name but I’ll protect her with a pseudonym—lived in Florida and was a seventeen-year-old junior in high school who was already using PGP. She e-mailed me: _I couldn’t speak for other teenagers and their parents, but with my extremely intrusive mother, I use all the privacy devices I can get. I’ve kept extensive journals since second grade—she’s always read them and nosed around, no matter where I’ve tried to hide them. She’s opened letters from friends and pokes her nose into anything that she considers unorthodox; we don’t quite see eye to eye on many issues. I’m a good student, responsible, don’t drink or do drugs, blah blah blah, but she has continuously invaded my privacy over the years despite her lack of justification._ _Two years ago I tried a locked drawer where I kept all of my papers, letters, and the like, but she has opened the drawer with my keys. So now I just do everything on the computer and encrypt/password it. I can see how some parents might justify searching their kids’ rooms—just as police can under circumstances justify searching homes._ But, Donna went on, if a child were doing something _illegal_, there “would be physical evidence.” That seemed clear: You could encrypt a diary full of unorthodox musings; you could not encode a marijuana stash.