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.

Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption PDF

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