Editing Pretty Good Privacy (section)

===Early history===
[[Phil Zimmermann]] created the first version of PGP encryption in 1991. The name, "Pretty Good Privacy" was inspired by the name of a [[grocery]] store, "Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery", featured in radio host [[Garrison Keillor]]'s fictional town, [[Lake Wobegon]].<ref>{{cite book |title=IT manager's handbook: getting your new job done |last1=Holtsnider |first1=Bill |last2=Jaffe |first2=Brian D. |year=2006 |publisher=[[Morgan Kaufmann Publishers|Morgan Kaufmann]] |edition=2nd |page=373 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OeQD_QPOYY4C&pg=PA373|isbn=978-0-08-046574-6}}</ref> This first version included a [[symmetric-key algorithm]] that Zimmermann had designed himself, named [[BassOmatic]] after a ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch. Zimmermann had been a long-time [[Anti-nuclear movement|anti-nuclear activist]], and created PGP encryption so that similarly inclined people might securely use [[bulletin board system|BBS]]s and securely store messages and files. No license fee was required for its non-commercial use, and the complete [[source code]] was included with all copies.

In a posting of June 5, 2001, entitled "PGP Marks 10th Anniversary",<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/news/PGP_10thAnniversary.html |title=PGP Marks 10th Anniversary |publisher=Phil Zimmermann |access-date=2010-08-23 |archive-date=March 9, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220309030942/https://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/news/PGP_10thAnniversary.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Zimmermann describes the circumstances surrounding his release of PGP:

{{quotation|It was on this day in 1991 that I sent the first release of PGP to a couple of my friends for uploading to the Internet. First, I sent it to Allan Hoeltje, who posted it to Peacenet, an ISP that specialized in grassroots political organizations, mainly in the peace movement. Peacenet was accessible to political activists all over the world. Then, I uploaded it to Kelly Goen, who proceeded to upload it to a Usenet newsgroup that specialized in distributing source code. At my request, he marked the Usenet posting as "US only". Kelly also uploaded it to many BBS systems around the country. I don't recall if the postings to the Internet began on June 5th or 6th.

It may be surprising to some that back in 1991, I did not yet know enough about Usenet newsgroups to realize that a "US only" tag was merely an advisory tag that had little real effect on how Usenet propagated newsgroup postings. I thought it actually controlled how Usenet routed the posting. But back then, I had no clue how to post anything on a newsgroup, and didn't even have a clear idea what a newsgroup was.}}

PGP found its way onto the [[Internet]] and rapidly acquired a considerable following around the world. Users and supporters included dissidents in totalitarian countries (some affecting letters to Zimmermann have been published, some of which have been included in testimony before the US Congress), [[civil libertarians]] in other parts of the world (see Zimmermann's published testimony in various hearings), and the 'free communications' activists who called themselves [[cypherpunk]]s (who provided both publicity and distribution); decades later, [[CryptoParty]] activists did much the same via [[Twitter]].