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(2 reviews)
Author: Whitfield Diffie
ISBN : 0262042401
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Format: PDF
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Telecommunication has never been perfectly secure. The Cold War culture of recording devices in telephone receivers and bugged embassy offices has been succeeded by a post-9/11 world of NSA wiretaps and demands for data retention. Although the 1990s battle for individual and commercial freedom to use cryptography was won, growth in the use of cryptography has been slow. Meanwhile, regulations requiring that the computer and communication industries build spying into their systems for government convenience have increased rapidly. The application of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act has expanded beyond the intent of Congress to apply to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other modern data services; attempts are being made to require ISPs to retain their data for years in case the government wants it; and data mining techniques developed for commercial marketing applications are being applied to widespread surveillance of the population.
In Privacy on the Line, Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau strip away the hype surrounding the policy debate over privacy 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. This updated and expanded edition revises their original -- and prescient -- discussions of both policy and technology in light of recent controversies over NSA spying and other government threats to communications privacy.
Direct download links available for Free Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption
- Hardcover: 496 pages
- Publisher: The MIT Press; updated and expanded edition edition (March 30, 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0262042401
- ISBN-13: 978-0262042406
- Product Dimensions: 1.5 x 6.3 x 9.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Free Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption
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.
By R. Eye
After hearing the 2013 news reports about U.S. government surveillance, I wanted to get more informed on the issues.
I had no idea that government surveillance has been as pervasive as it is, for as long as it has been. We learn here of privacy violations starting at least in the late 1800s in the form of overreaching census taking; numerous people were arrested for refusing to answer questions that they thought were none of the government's business to be asking.
The book takes us from there through about 2005 (published in 2007), with accounts of excessive wiretapping on Martin Luther King Jr., opening the mail of private citizens, increasingly extending the reach of authorized wiretapping, attempting to learn from the public library system who might be a spy based on checking out books about science, and more.
This isn't light reading, with an immense amount of information conveyed, but if you're interested in learning more about privacy and surveillance in the United States, this is an excellent resource.
By Trevis Rothwell