Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption

Whitfield Diffie, Susan Landau9780262041676, 0-262-04167-7

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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Table of contents :
Header……Page 0
Cover……Page 1
Contents……Page 3
Preface……Page 4
1 – Introduction……Page 7
2 – Cryptography……Page 13
3 – Cryptography and Public Policy……Page 42
4 – National Security……Page 64
5 – Law Enforcement……Page 87
6 – Privacy: Protections and Threats……Page 97
7 – Wiretapping……Page 116
8 – Communications: The Current Scene……Page 139
9 – Cryptography: The Current Scene……Page 155
10 – Conclusion……Page 168
Notes……Page 183
Bibliography……Page 229