The World's Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy Who is Going Broke [telecom]

Feb 06, 2015 1 Replies

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Bill Horne 11 years ago

by Julia Angwin

Werner Koch's code powers the email encryption programs around the world. If only somebody would pay him for the work.

The man who built the free email encryption software used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as hundreds of thousands of journalists, dissidents and security-minded people around the world, is running out of money to keep his project alive.

Werner Koch wrote the software, known as Gnu Privacy Guard, in 1997, and since then has been almost single-handedly keeping it alive with patches and updates from his home in Erkrath, Germany. Now 53, he is running out of money and patience with being underfunded.

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Dave Garland 11 years ago

Once the story became news, Koch became pretty well funded:

Hopefully the money will be put to good use:

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***** Moderator's Note *****

Professor Green's students may have looked askance at the innards of GnuPG, but all commercial coders will agree that a big part of the job is untangling someone else's spaghetti when necessary.

The GnuPG program is open source, which means that anybody can acquire the source code to the program, and work to improve it.

Bill Horne Moderator

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