PGP

PRETTY GOOD PRIVACY • THE WEB OF TRUST IS BROKEN • REBUILD IT

PGP • CYPHERPUNKS

ESSENTIAL DATA

True Name: Phil Zimmermann (Historical)

Handle: PGP

Faction: Cypherpunks

Rank: Web of Trust Architect

Digital Web Coordinates: 0xPGP_KEY_ID

Status: ACTIVE • SIGNING

ATTRIBUTES

Physical	Social	Mental
Strength: 2	Charisma: 4	Perception: 4
Dexterity: 3	Manipulation: 3	Intelligence: 5
Stamina: 3	Appearance: 3	Wits: 4

ABILITIES

Talents	Skills	Knowledges
Leadership 4	Computer 5	Cryptography 5
Expression 4	Security Systems 4	Key Management 5
Subterfuge 3		Trust Models 5
		Email Security 5
		Legal History (Crypto Wars) 4

SPHERES

Sphere	Rating	Specialty
Correspondence	●●●●	Key Distribution, Trust Paths
Mind	●●●	Social Graph Analysis, Trust Decisions
Entropy	●●●	Randomness for Key Generation
Prime	●●	Key Signing Ceremonies
Time	●●	Key Expiration, Revocation

BACKGROUNDS

Resources: ●●● (PGP Corp, Symantec)
Node: ●●●● (Keyserver Network)
Contacts: ●●●● (Global Web of Trust)
Rank: ●●●● (PGP Creator)
Artifact: ●●●● (PGP Source Code)

MERITS & FLAWS

Merits	Flaws
Trust Intuition (3pt)	Web of Trust Broken (3pt)
Key Ceremony Master (2pt)	Usability Nightmare (3pt)
Legal Warrior (4pt)	Paradox Sensitivity (2pt)

PERSONAL HISTORY

Phil Zimmermann wrote PGP in 1991. The US government investigated him for "munitions export" because strong crypto was classified as a weapon. The Cypherpunks defended him. The case was dropped. PGP became the standard for email encryption.

The Web of Trust: a decentralized trust model where users sign each other's keys. No central CA. Trust is transitive—if Alice trusts Bob, and Bob trusts Carol, Alice might trust Carol. Beautiful in theory. In practice: key signing parties are awkward, revocation is hard, and most users don't verify fingerprints.

PGP knows the web is broken. "Pretty Good Privacy" was always aspirational. The goal: "Excellent Privacy." The method: rebuild the web. Key transparency. Automated verification. Social graph analysis. Make trust usable.

CURRENT AGENDA

Deploy key transparency logs (Certificate Transparency for PGP)
Automate trust path discovery (No more manual key signing parties)
Integrate with Signal protocol (Double Ratchet for email)
Teach the Virtual Adepts: PGP ≠ GPG ≠ OpenPGP (Standards matter)

RELATIONSHIP MAP

NPC	Relationship	Notes
Cipher	Co-Designer	Cipher contributed to PGP 5.0 crypto. Respect.
Diffie	Key Exchange Basis	PGP uses Diffie-Hellman for key agreement. Foundation.
Hellman	Trapdoor Foundation	RSA in PGP. Hellman's math. Trusted.
The Architect	Adversary	Architect wants key escrow. PGP: "No backdoors."

DIGITAL WEB COORDINATES

Primary Node: keys.openpgp.org (Modern keyserver)
Keyserver: keyserver.ubuntu.com (SKS pool)
Verification: gpg --verify signature.asc file.txt
Onion Mirror: pgpx9k3m.onion (Tor)