Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government--Saving Privacy in the Digital Age - Hardcover

Levy, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670859508 ISBN 13: 9780670859504

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2001

Synopsis

The author of Hackers chronicles the two-decades-old battle to wrest control of information from government that paired the nation's computer-adept elite with big business. 40,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Steven Levy is the author of Hackers, which has been in print for more than fifteen years, as well as Insanely Great: The Life & Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything. He is also Newsweek's chief technology writer.

Reviews

The government's argument, doggedly pressed mainly by such security-obsessed arms as the Department of Defense, the Justice Department and the National Security Agency: cryptography should be under firm government control, with strong codes to protect national security and weak ones for the public so that the government can break them to catch criminals and terrorists. The counterargument, pressed with equal determination by a mixed group that Levy rather unflatteringly calls the Cypherpunks: secure codes are vital to business transactions in the digital age and to people wanting privacy in electronic communications. Levy, chief technology writer for Newsweek, goes deeply into the 30-year battle over which side would prevail. He tours the landmarks of the battlefield, among them the government's Data Encryption Standard, public-key cryptography, the key escrow plan and the Clipper Chip. And he vividly portrays the leading actors on both sides. In the end, it was the burgeoning of the Internet and the necessities of e-commerce that won the day for the Cypherpunks. As Judge Betty B. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit put it in a decision handed down last year: "Government attempts to control encryption ... may well implicate not only First Amendment rights of cryptographers but also the constitutional rights of each of us as potential recipients of encryption's bounty."

EDITORS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Crypto is a detailed and disturbing report.

The author of the 1994 sleeper Hackers reveals how a group of men developed methods for encrypting digital transmissions for use in the private sector. As the digital age was dawning in the late 1970s, a major stumbling block to delivering information and conducting transactions via high-speed networks was the lack of security from outside parties who might wish to intercept the data (even though the National Security Agency had acres of computers dedicated to protecting government secrets and even more designed to decode other countries' messages). Widely available systems only began to emerge after a range of free thinkers, including such crypto legends as Whit Diffie and Marty Hellman, began to devote their considerable mind power to the issue. After a slow start, Levy's story steadily builds momentum as the crypto pioneers do battle with the NSA, look for ways to commercialize their discoveries and fight for the federal government's approval of the strongest encryption methods. The chief technology writer for Newsweek, Levy locates the heart of the matter in the struggle to balance the need for the most effective encryption possible with the government's need to decode messages that might endanger national securityAa struggle in which privacy, so far, has prevailed. Agent, Dominick Abel . (Jan. 8) Forecast: Levy's reputation grows with each book, and publicity that links this title to his bestselling Hackers will ensure strong sales. The title is backed by a six-city author tour and national radio satellite tour. The major promo campaign online, where Levy is minor royalty, may be most effective, but the book's biggest boost will come from the planned excerpt in Newsweek.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

What happens to privacy when computer geeks and big business battle the government for free access to information? From the author of Hackers.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The government monopoly of sophisticated codes is no more, dissolved by the invention of "public key" cryptography, and Levy here recounts how a handful of mathematicians and computer scientists did it. Simon Singh succinctly described public key's principal creators and operating principles in The Code Book (1999). Levy emphasizes the story's business aspects and patent disputes among the inventors. In addition, he folds in incidents involving emissaries from the secret world of the National Security Agency, who subsequently helped to break the agency's lock on high-level codes. Profiling names now legendary in cryptography--such as Whit Diffie, Phil Zimmerman, or a trio whose acronymic RSA algorithm makes secure e-commerce possible--Levy lucidly limns their counterintuitive thinking about codes (especially the idea that keys, based on gigantic prime numbers, be exchanged in the open for all to see). Culminating with reportage on their efforts to commercialize and export public-key crypto, which the NSA successfully lobbied the Clinton administration to limit, Levy's history is a fascinating intersection of people, privacy, and power. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670859508
• ISBN 13: 9780670859504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352