Own a piece of the crypto wars

[R.A. Hettinga]

If Sameer autographed it, it would probably worth much more.

:-)

Cheers,
RAH
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<http://www.creativedestruction.com/archives/000933.html>Creative
Destruction

Creative Destruction
Sameer Parekh

+ ICON Aircraft Launches | Main | "Angie" ;

Own a piece of the crypto wars

Back in the day, it was illegal to export cryptographic software.

The solution for my company, C2Net Software, Inc., was to develop an
offshore development team and have them develop the software there.
Other companies developed different strategies. Most opted to sell
broken products to their overseas customers. One other company cared
about the security of their customers. That company was PGP.

PGP chose a different strategy however. They published their source
code as a book. The book was then exported, the contents of that book
were then scanned in, and then a completely legal international
version of PGP was born.

More details of the story.

Some may associate this PGP scanning effort with the track 'round and
round'. That association is not without reason. They may also remember
a sign that said, "This is the cypherpunks party tent. If you wish to
sleep, remove your tent from the area. Have a nice day (+ night)".
That sign, btw, lives on.

In any case, I was going through all my boxes trying to decide what I
should keep, toss, or sell, and I found my very own copy of the
infamous PGP 5.0 source code book. NIB! (Well actually there was no
box. But still shrinkwrapped. So NIB.)

I decided that the bulk was too much for me to handle moving into a
tiny little NYC apartment. So ebay it is.
Hopefully it will find a nice loving home.

PGP 5.0 Source Code Books:
<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200231858442&ssPageName=A
DME:L:LCA:US:1123
 >

Posted by Sameer on June 14, 2008 4:41 PM | Permalink