Privacy on the Line: Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Privacy on the Line: Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption Book

There was a time when cryptography--the making and breaking of secret codes--was of interest only to spies, diplomats, and the occasional eccentric. Those days are over, and the reason, as Diffie and Landau explain, is that secret codes have become the key to preserving traditional notions of privacy at a time when technology is rapidly altering the nature of human communication. When the vast majority of conversations happened face to face, keeping them private was a simple matter of stepping away from the listening crowd. But the growing number of conversations that take place over easy-to-intercept phone lines and e-mail channels requires more sophisticated safeguards. Above all, it requires online encryption tools of the highest grade, and this book does a good job of explaining how these tools work, both in principle and in practice. It does a better job, though, of explaining why the tools matter. The intense political battles that have surrounded digital cryptography in recent years are a testament to the profound political implications of privacy in the online era, and Diffie and Landau have delivered an admirably thorough overview of both the struggles and the stakes. If at times their thoroughness bogs them down in dry recitations of detail, their book at least generates more light than heat, and that can hardly be said of most contributions to the cryptography debate so far. --Julian Dibbell Read More

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  • Product Description

    "This engagingly written account provides the necessary historical context and technical know-how to understand the 1990s battle over computer encryption, in which Diffie is probably the nation's best-informed expert." -- Privacy Journal

    Telecommunication has never been perfectly secure, as a Cold War culture of wiretaps and international spying taught us. Yet many of us still take our privacy for granted, even as we become more reliant than ever on telephones, computer networks, and electronic transactions of all kinds. So many of our relationships now use telecommunication as the primary mode of communication that the security of these transactions has become a source of wide public concern and debate. Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau argue that if we are to retain the privacy that characterized face-to-face relationships in the past, we must build the means of protecting that privacy into our communication systems.

    This has not proved simple, however. The development of such protection has been delayed--and may be prevented--by powerful elements of society that intercept communications in the name of protecting public safety. Intelligence and law-enforcement agencies see the availability of strong cryptography as a threat to their functions.

    The U.S. government has used export control to limit the availability of cryptography within the United States, and bills introduced in Congress in 1997 would place legal restrictions on essential elements of any secure communications system. These policies attempt to limit encryption to forms that provide a "back door" for government wiretapping.

    Diffie and Landau strip away the hype surrounding the policy debate to examine the national security, law enforcement, commercial, and civil liberties issues. They discuss the social function of privacy, how it underlies a democratic society, and what happens when it is lost. They also explore the workings of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, how they intercept communications, and how they use what they intercept.

    More information is available at our book-of-the-month site.

  • 0262041677
  • 9780262041676
  • Whitfield Diffie, Susan Landau
  • 19 February 1998
  • MIT Press
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 352
  • Second Printing
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