Aryana Libris

Authors : Diffie Whitfield - Landau Susan
Title : Privacy on the line The politics of wiretapping and encryption Updated and expanded edition
Year : 1999

Link download : Diffie_Whitfield_-_Landau_Susan_-_Privacy_on_the_line.zip

Preface to the Updated and Expanded Edition. It would be difficult to find a more fundamental theme in the contemporary world than the migration of human activity from physical, face-to-face contact into the virtual world of electronic (and digital) telecommunications. Globalization would not be possible without the high-quality, reliable, and inexpensive telephone service that has been made possible by optical fibers and computerized central offices. In the industrialized world and beyond, governments, businesses, universities, and other institutions have made the World Wide Web a centerpiece of their communications with the public. One of the critical issues raised by this transformation is what effect it will have on privacy and security. The digitization of the world has made the effortless privacy of interpersonal conversations a thing of the past and enabled spying on a global scale never before seen. The decisions we make as we lay the foundations of the new world will have an impact on the structure of human society that transcends that of any previous technological development. If, in designing our new world, we do not take privacy and security into account in a way that reflects the primacy of the individual, our technology will enforce a social order in which the individual is subordinate to the institutions whose interests were put foremost in the design. The first edition of Privacy on the Line was written at a time in which the issue seemed simple. The primary technology for protecting telecommunications privacy was cryptography, and the right to use cryptography for the protection of personal and business privacy seemed in jeopardy. The battle had two fronts, and we set out to explore them both. The more visible front was chronologically second but stood first in most people’s minds. The US government’s plan for key escrow sought to use its standard-setting power—backed by its substantial purchasing power - to make cryptographic systems with built-in government master keys ubiquitous. Had the plan succeeded, it might plausibly have been extended to outlaw systems that did not have this provision. The less visible but economically more significant front was export control. Exporting of cryptographic products had been tightly controlled for decades but, until the sudden need for cryptography in commercial uses that followed the opening up of the Internet this had, by and large, only the intended effect of inhibiting the exporting of cryptographic equipment intended for military customers. As low-cost integrated circuits brought high-grade cryptography within the reach of many commercial products, its use expanded steadily. Businesses oriented toward making consumer products now found themselves forced by the export laws to bear the unrewarding expense of producing separate products for export and for domestic consumption. The first edition was written in the midst of this political struggle over whether individuals and commercial enterprises had a right to protect their communications with cryptography or whether governments had the right to limit its use to prevent possible interference with their law-enforcement and intelligence activities. The preface to that edition gives a flavor of the situation as it stood at that time. A book written in the midst of events will always become outdated, sometimes quite quickly. Just the short interval between the appearance of the original edition and the first paperbound edition saw a striking sequence of events. ...