Waubonsee Community College

Privacy on the line, the politics of wiretapping and encryption, Whitfield Diffie, Susan Landau

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-317) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Privacy on the line

bibliography

37806171

Whitfield Diffie, Susan Landau

the politics of wiretapping and encryption

Telecommunication has never been perfectly secure, as the 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 systemsDiffie and Landau examine the national-security, law-enforcement, commercial, and civil-liberties issues. They discuss privacy's social function, how it underlies a democratic society, and what happens when it is lost. They also explore how intelligence and law-enforcement organizations work, how they intercept communications, and how they use what they intercept

Introduction -- Cryptography -- Cryptography and public policy -- National security -- Law enforcement -- Privacy: protections and threats -- Wiretapping -- Communications: the current scene -- Cryptography: the current scene -- Conclusion