From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@well.com> Subject: Re: UK newspaper names Zimmermann a "neo-Nazi sympathiser" To: Declan McCullagh Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 18:13:11 -0800 (PST) Cc: fight-censorship+@andrew.cmu.edu Zimmermann stands to recover a lot if he sues the Telegraph under British libel laws. --Mike [...]
Subject: "PRZ a nazi" to be retracted To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks) Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 21:58:48 -0700 (MST) Cc: prz@acm.org (Philip Zimmermann) From: Philip Zimmermann <prz@acm.org> Reply-To: Philip Zimmermann <prz@acm.org> X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL22] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-cypherpunks@toad.com Precedence: bulk
The Sunday Telegraph of London printed a story last Sunday about neo-nazis using PGP to encrypt their communications. The story said that PGP was devised by an American neo-nazi sympathizer. As the creator of PGP, and a human rights activist, I was outraged by such a defamation from a major newspaper. I called my lawyer Phil Dubois, who seemed to look forward to having some fun with this newspaper.
Not wanting to wait around till the morning, and slow lawyers, I called Robin Gedye, the reporter in Bonn who wrote the story, at 7am Monday morning Bonn time, and woke him up at home. I introduced myself and told him how I felt about it. He had never heard of me, the Clipper chip, the
controversies
of cryptography, and knew nothing about PGP outside of the couple of sentences in his story that mentioned PGP. He said it wasn't really so bad, because he didn't specifically identify me by name. One can imagine the effectiveness of that excuse with me. I then went into some detail with him to bring him up to speed. I also called his editor in London, who also had never heard of me or PGP.
After some checking, they discovered that the Daily Telegraph, a related newspaper, had run an article about my case just a week before. They also found about 20 recent articles on me in the UK press. The editor said that my story "checks out". It was good to know that they now believed that I was not a neo-nazi after all.
Anyway, Mr. Gedye says that the Sunday Telegraph will print a retraction next Sunday. Not just a little retraction, but a whole article on the subject, written by Mr. Gedye himself. I'm glad to see that this probably means that he will dig into the subject more, in order to write such an article.
I guess this means maybe I'll find some other things to occupy Phil Dubois's time.
-Philip Zimmermann 23 Jan 96
// declan@eff.org // My opinions are not in any way those of the EFF //