![]() It is 1991 after all, and there is still a sizable amount of XT/AT class machines out there, along with the 68000 Amiga/Atari/Macintosh (upgraded QL’s? 128kb really isn’t enough). Try as some people may have demanded ‘back door access’ or black box crypto chips, the cat was out of the bag, and all you needed was a C compiler and a zip file small enough to easily fit on a low density 5 1/4″ diskette. Investigations were launched, agencies contacted, and in spite of it all people had signing parities to exchange public keys, and sign the trust building the web. ![]() Strong cryptography went from being something considered ‘weapons grade’ and thusly requiring a munitions license to produce and distribute to suddenly being available to the world at large. And of course it was that widely available source that led to the first real people of trying to geofence on the internet, and it was naturally impossible to contain, even in the era before VPN’s people were able to circumvent any and all “protections” and download away. It’s crazy how crypto went from being an obtuse tool, to suddenly being in the hands of normal people with a public web of trust, and widely available source. ![]() It’s been 30 years since the initial launch of PGP! Hard to believe what a firestorm it ignited i the 1990’s and the real pity of how the crypto field is just as baffling and confusing to people today as it was back then.
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