PGPfone for the VoIP age

Thank goodness for graybeards like Phil Zimmerman, the creator of PGP in 1991, PGPfone in 1996, and now Zfone, a "bump in the protocol stack" that can encrypt all VoIP packets leaving your PC. As the site puts it, "Zfone lets you whisper in someone's ear, even if their ear is a thousand miles away."

An intriguing detail - the key agreements & management are handled peer-to-peer over the RTP packet stream. That means no reliance on external servers, trusted third parties, or even personal keychain management. All that admistrivia that has bedeviled the use of encryption in email and kept it marginalized as something practised by only the geekiest of geeks.

My only complaint? Is Mr. Zimmerman so needful of personal recognition that he must embed his last initial in not only the product name but the encryption protocol it uses - ZRTP?