Customer Reviews

Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption

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I bought this book while taking a graduate course in Cryptography for a research paper on privacy and encryption. The field is rather fascinating and this book does an excellent job of providing the whys for some of the recent legislation. Anyone who is concerned about social networking Internet sites and Internet privacy should read this book. It uses no scare tactics or big brother is watching you drama, it is based on research and facts and presents the current state of affairs in privacy in a professional manner. Whitfield Diffie has been instrumental in helping to bring the field of Cryptanalysis from a linguist-based discipline to a mathematical one (Diffie-Hellman symmetric encryption key exchange or Alice & Bob exchanging secure messages examples) and this book is a logical extension of his craft. I found it chock full of information I did not know about how the concept of privacy has evolved and with it the evolving legislation. If you are aware of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuits regarding the unethical (and for At&T unlawful) surveillance (capture of data) of American citizens and just about anyone who has a computer or a cell phone by the commiseration of NSA and At&T in San Francisco, CA, it would help if you read this book to understand how we reached these new heights in the invasion of personal privacy and introduce you to cryptography's role in it. Highly recommend.