Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"...[A] wise, meticulously researched and, given the bureaucratic language of policy making, surprisingly readable guide."
— London Review of Books
Review
"Privacy on the Line. . . should be required reading for any computing student at any level..."
— Harold Thimbleby, New Scientist
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [291]-321) and index.
About the Author
Whitfield Diffie, the inventor of public-key cryptography, is Vice President, Sun Fellow, and Chief Security Officer at Sun Microsystems.Susan Landau is Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems.
Table of Contents
Introduction -- Cryptography -- Cryptography and public policy -- National security -- Law enforcement -- Privacy: protections and threats -- Wiretapping -- Communications: the current scene -- Cryptography: the current scene -- Conclusion.