Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption: Diffie, Whitfield, Landau, Susan: 9780262041676: Amazon.com: Books

Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption Second Printing Edition

by Whitfield Diffie (Author), Susan Landau (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0262041676

ISBN-10: 9780262041676

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Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption (MIT Press)

Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption (MIT Press)
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1999 IEEE-USAB Award for Distinguished Literary Contributions Furthering Public Understanding of the Profession. and Winner of the 1998 Donald McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communication Policy Research

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. 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.

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.

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Anyone in math or cryptography knows about author Whitfield Diffie

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2009

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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.

5 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2000

During the civil war in Beirut some years ago, Life magazine ran a photo essay of people lounging around a hotel pool, ostensibly oblivious to the hostilities around them. In a similar sense, many people are unaware of a skirmish currently being fought on the digital battlefield: the war for protection of personal privacy.
The authors of this book assert that privacy is one of the underpinnings of a democratic society, and that if the democratic society in the United States is to survive, Americans must maintain privacy in communications. In addition, the means of protecting that privacy must be built into all current and future communication systems.
In recent years, the convergence of the Internet, telecommunications, and other technologies has elevated personal privacy to new levels of importance. It is now possible to effortlessly track a person's every movement, from the path of the morning commute to the choice of sandwich at lunch. Every keystroke and e-mail transmission can likewise be monitored.
Authors Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau assert that in the "old days," when communications largely occurred face to face, privacy was simply a matter of stepping aside from those who butted in. With voice communications traveling over cellular networks, through the Internet, and via other pathways prone to compromise, the best method of securing such communications is with strong encryption.
The authors argue their case effectively and engagingly, and are uniquely qualified to do so, especially in the case of Diffie. He is one of the seminal computer scientists of the last 30 years, and hardly a household doesn't benefit from security technology he helped develop. While he has written scholarly tomes and dissertations on encryption, Diffie does an excellent job here of explaining in plain English how such technologies operate and why they are crucial to a free society.
The book details numerous privacy issues, from personal privacy to national security. It starts with a brief overview of cryptography, just enough to educate the reader without boring the nonmathematician. The rest of the book explores issues related to today's communications systems, such as wiretapping. A welcome surprise is that the book often reads like a Tom Clancy novel, interwoven as it is with episodes of domestic and international intrigue.
Privacy on the Line is a timely and important book, relevant to every citizen, wired or not. Security professionals will find this work well worth their time.
This review of mine originally appeared at [...]

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Top reviews from other countries

Christopher Parsons

Masterful!

Reviewed in Canada on January 18, 2009

Verified Purchase

This updated edition of Diffie and Landau's text is a must-have for anyone who is interested in how encryption and communicative privacy politics have developed in the US over the past century or so. Moving beyond just a 'who did what', the authors bring their considerable expertise in cryptography to bear in order to give the reader a strong understanding of the actual methods of securing digital transactions.

If you are interested in American spy politics, or in encryption, or in how these two intersect in the American political arena, then this text is for you. The only disappointment is the relative lack of examination of how the US has operated internationally - there is very little mention of the OECD, nor of European data protection, to say nothing of APEC. Regardless, I'd highly recommend this book, especially if you want a firm base to begin comparative work in spy politics.

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