The story of the so-called crypto-wars, the fight for online privacy between the American government and a bunch of internet renegades known as the cypherpunks.
Here we are in 2022 navigating cancel culture, Brexit, identity politics, war in Europe.
How did we get here? Did we miss something? Robert Carlyle, who played the wildcard Begbie in the '90s hit Trainspotting, is here to show us that we did. That the world we live in was shaped by the forgotten decade: the 1990s.
From Hong Kong to Moscow, Cool Britannia to No Frills flights, we travel back in time to key moments in the '90s that reverberate today in unexpected ways.
Episode 5: Tech
Robert Carlyle uncovers a conflict in the 90s that we may not have been aware of 鈥� the crypto-wars between the so-called cypherpunks and the United States government. The fight was over online privacy and it was won by a computer programme called Phil Zimmermann, who faced four years in jail for releasing software called Pretty Good Privacy. As Jamie Bartlett, the author of The Missing Cryptoqueen explains, if it wasn鈥檛 for Phil, we wouldn鈥檛 be able to communicate securely online today.
Producer: Stephen Hughes
Sound Designer/Composer: Phil Channell
Consultant: Jamie Bartlett
Last on
More episodes
Previous
Next
Broadcasts
- Fri 6 May 2022 13:45麻豆社 Radio 4
- Sun 23 Oct 2022 14:45麻豆社 Radio 4
Podcast
-
![]()
What Really Happened in the Nineties?
Robert Carlyle takes us back to moments we missed in the '90s that shaped the world today.
