This week, the social networking service Facebook quietly announced that it will begin making
PGP encryption available for communications from Facebook to its
users. While this step, in itself, is a small one not likely
to directly impact many individuals, if it signals a resurgence in
development of public key cryptography for use by the general
public, it will have dramatic consequences for the privacy and
security community and for the lawyers who support it.
PGP is the encryption protocol
developed in the 1990s by Phil Zimmermann as the first tool widely
available for general public use that applies the same highly
secure encryption techniques once used almost exclusively by
governments and military to secure communications. At the time,
encryption technology was restricted from export, and the author
fought a long legal battle over his release of the product. While
sophisticated in its encryption capabilities, PGP and more recent
incarnations of similar
