Crypto Wars: The Fight for Privacy in the Digital Age: A Political History of Digital Encryption
- Length: 440 pages
- Edition: 1
- Language: English
- Publisher: CRC Press
- Publication Date: 2020-12-15
- ISBN-10: 036764245X
- ISBN-13: 9780367642457
- Sales Rank: #11919816 (See Top 100 Books)
The crypto wars have raged for half a century.
In the 1970s, digital privacy activists prophesied the emergence of an Orwellian State, made possible by computer-mediated mass surveillance. The antidote: digital encryption.
The U.S. government warned encryption would not only prevent surveillance of law-abiding citizens, but of criminals, terrorists, and foreign spies, ushering in a rival dystopian future.
Both parties fought to defend the citizenry from what they believed the most perilous threats. The government tried to control encryption to preserve its surveillance capabilities; privacy activists armed citizens with cryptographic tools and challenged encryption regulations in the courts.
No clear victor has emerged from the crypto wars. Governments have failed to forge a framework to govern the, at times conflicting, civil liberties of privacy and security in the digital age―an age when such liberties have an outsized influence on the citizen–State power balance. Solving this problem is more urgent than ever.
Digital privacy will be one of the most important factors in how we architect twenty-first century societies―its management is paramount to our stewardship of democracy for future generations. We must elevate the quality of debate on cryptography, on how we govern security and privacy in our technology-infused world. Failure to end the crypto wars will result in societies sleepwalking into a future where the citizen–State power balance is determined by a twentieth-century status quo unfit for this century, endangering both our privacy and security.
This book provides a history of the crypto wars, with the hope its chronicling sets a foundation for peace.
Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Preface Prologue: A New Cryptological Era Chapter 1 The Crypto Wars References Chapter 2 A Brief History of Communications Revolutions 2.1 The Written Word 2.2 Printing Press 2.3 Postal System 2.4 Telegraph 2.5 Telephone 2.6 Communications Revolutions Summary References Chapter 3 The Cypherpunks 3.1 The Most Extreme Crypto-Anarchist Manifestation: Assassination Politics 3.2 Arise, Cypherpunks 3.3 The Fear of Big Brother 3.4 Cypherpunk Objectives 3.4.1 No Government Cryptography Regulations: Freedom for the Bits! 3.4.2 Anonymous Communications: A Shield from the Tyranny of the Majority 3.4.3 Anonymous Economic Transactions (Cryptocurrencies) 3.4.4 Whistleblowing Platforms to Constrain Governments: Falling the Beast 3.5 Digital Insurgents: Code Is Law 3.6 The Crypto Singularity 3.7 How Anarchist Were the Cypherpunks? 3.8 The Hacker Ethic 3.9 Cypherpunks and Counterculture: Levitating the Pentagon 3.10 The Source of the Cypherpunks’ Distrust 3.11 Cypherpunk Literature and Film References Chapter 4 Crypto War I (1966–1981): The Data Encryption Standard (DES) 4.1 The Codebreakers: David Kahn Publishes a Cryptological Bible 4.2 An Enigmatic German: Horst Feistel and Digital Dossiers 4.3 The Demon Re-Christened 4.4 Seeking a Data Encryption Standard 4.5 Public Critique 4.6 The Workshops: Government Attempts to Ease Public DES Concerns 4.7 Senate DES Investigation 4.8 The 1990s: Cypherpunks Plot DES’ Demise 4.9 DES: In Retrospect 4.10 A Quarter Century of Protest References Chapter 5 Crypto War I (1966–1981): The Battle for Academic Freedom 5.1 An Itinerate Cryptographer: Whitfield Diffie Meets Martin Hellman 5.2 Diffie and Cryptology 5.3 Hellman and Cryptology 5.4 Public Key Cryptography: Solving the Key Distribution Problem 5.5 New Directions in Cryptography 5.6 The MIT Trio: Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman (RSA) 5.7 Human Ingenuity: Testing RSA 5.8 NSA Employee Warns Cryptographers against Publishing 5.9 Government Concerns of ITAR and EAR Constitutionality in the 1970s–80s 5.10 The National Science Foundation: The Cryptologists’ Achilles’ Heel? 5.11 The Cryptographic Information Protection Act and a New NSA Director 5.12 NSA Classifies Cryptographic Inventions 5.13 The Sky Is Falling: NSA Engage Academia and Take Their Message Public 5.14 Public Cryptography Study Group and the Voluntary Review System 5.15 Adleman Receives Funding from an Unwanted Source 5.16 Voluntary Review Loses Its Efficacy 5.17 The First Crypto War: Summary 5.18 Did the Digital Privacy Activists Make a Difference? References Chapter 6 Crypto War II (1991–2002): Digital Signature Standard (DSS) and Key Escrow (Clipper) 6.1 Digital Signature Standard 6.2 Key Escrow: Clipper Chip Genesis 6.3 Key Escrow: Public Response 6.4 Key Escrow: Son of Clipper 6.5 Cryptography’s Role in Securing the Information Society (CRISIS) 6.6 Key Escrow: Clipper III References Chapter 7 Crypto War II (1991–2002): Export Battles 7.1 Outlawing Cryptography: 1991 Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act 7.2 Encryption for the Masses: Phil Zimmermann 7.3 PGP: v2.0 and Cypherpunks’ Launch 7.4 PGP: Investigation of Phil Zimmermann 7.5 PGP: Publicity and Encryption’s Greater Good Argument 7.6 PGP: Resolving the Patent Issue and MIT Protection 7.7 PGP: Circumventing Export Controls 7.8 PGP: Conclusion of the Zimmermann Investigation 7.9 Code as Constitutionally Protected Speech I: Daniel Bernstein 7.10 Code as Constitutionally Protected Speech III: Applied Cryptography 7.11 Code as Constitutionally Protected Speech III: Peter Junger 7.12 Encryption and Congress 7.13 Subverting Foreign Governments’ Crypto 7.14 The Towers Fall 7.15 The Second Crypto War: Summary References Chapter 8 Crypto War III (2013–Present): The Snowden Era 8.1 Snowden Ignites Crypto War III 8.2 NSA Encryption Access Program: Operation BULLRUN 8.3 Snowden’s Impact 8.4 FBI Targets Encryption Keys of Snowden’s Email Provider, Lavabit 8.5 Going Dark: FBI Encryption Fears 8.6 Apple Defies the Courts: San Bernardino and Exceptional Access 8.7 Burr-Feinstein Exceptional Access Law 8.8 Ghost Users: Crypto Wars in the UK 8.9 The Trump Years 8.10 Biden Victory 8.11 The Third Crypto War: Summary References Chapter 9 Conclusion 9.1 Conclusion: Moving the Debate Forwards 9.2 Where Do We Go from Here? References Acknowledgments About the Author Index
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