The World’s Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who is Going Broke

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.propublica.org/article/the-worlds-email-encryption-software-relies-on-one-guy-who-is-going-broke

By Julia Angwin
ProPublica
Feb. 5, 2015

Update, Feb. 5, 2015, 8:10 p.m.: After this article appeared, Werner Koch 
informed us that last week he was awarded a one-time grant of $60,000 from 
Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative. Werner told us he only 
received permission to disclose it after our article published. Meanwhile, 
since our story was posted, donations flooded Werner's website donation 
page and he reached his funding goal of $137,000. In addition, Facebook 
and the online payment processor Stripe each pledged to donate $50,000 a 
year to Koch’s project.

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.

"I'm too idealistic," he told me in an interview at a hacker convention in 
Germany in December. "In early 2013 I was really about to give it all up 
and take a straight job." But then the Snowden news broke, and "I realized 
this was not the time to cancel."

[...]

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