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Philip Zimmermann (born February 12, 1954) is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the most widely used email encryption software in the world. He was the first to make asymmetric, or public key, encryption software easily available to all. This led the US Customs to make him the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread all around the world following its 1991 publication on the Internet as free software. After the government dropped its case without indictment in early 1996, Zimmermann founded PGP Inc. That company was acquired by Network Associates (NAI) in December 1997, where he stayed on for three years as a Senior Fellow. In 2002, PGP was acquired from NAI by a new company called PGP Corporation, which Zimmermann now serves as special advisor and consultant. Zimmermann is also a fellow at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.
Zimmermann has received numerous technical and humanitarian awards for his pioneering work in cryptography:
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