about you and your lifestyle. The battle for privacy has long since been lost in the real world. As more and more human ac- tivity becomes computerised, governments are scrambling to preserve and extend their powers in the era of the information age and beyond. No one is saying that national security is unim- portant, that child pornographers should not be stopped, or that crimes should not be punished. It's just that the same tired catch phrases are used time and time again to diminish everyone's rights.

He cited the ECHELON project, a keyword-based intelligence- gathering effort involving agencies in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, as an example of global surveillance run amok. Created under the guise of combating "'rogue nations' and 'terrorists,'" he said, the system had been turned against compa- nies and individuals conducting business that "cannot possibly have National security implications." Encryption, he concluded, "is the mechanism with which to combat these intrusions, preserve your rights, and guarantee your freedoms into the information age and beyond."

On the encryption message boards, Le Roux was helpful and engaging. His grasp of complex technical matters was readily ap- parent, and occasionally a bit of nerdy humor even shone through. "It's certainly not something you want to try without first telling your wife you will be in your room for a year," he wrote of one particular programming challenge. His own marriage didn't sur- vive the release of E4M, though, and in December 1999 he and Michelle divorced amicably. Court records noted only that "the marriage had broken down irretrievably" and had produced no children.

Le Roux soon abandoned Australia, bound for Hong Kong and then Rotterdam, picking up programming work along the way. His release of E4M as free open-source software left him unpaid for his years-long obsession, so he launched a contract program- ming company called SW Professionals, nominally based back in