Message-Id: <199308021828.AA12198@flubber.cc.utexas.edu> Subject: Re: lookin' for a slogan for Tshirts Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1993 13:28:36 -0500 (CDT) From: Jim McCoy
I wrote:
"celebrating 4000 years of strong cryptography in the hands of private citizens"
Jim replied:
A nice thought, but it is not quite true now, is it? Cryptography has been a tool for specialists, scholars, and governments for those 4000 years, but to claim that "the masses" have had access to it is clearly untrue. In fact, it seems that the current friction between groups such as this one and the U.S. governement is caused mostly because private citizens are beginning to get access to this strong cryptography and this is something "those who watch" do not like...
Jim, I meant precisely this. It is quite true. I didn't say "the masses". In the old days, first you had to be literate to use crypto. That excluded the masses immediately. However, it was private citizens -- not military folks or diplomats -- who had access to and who often invented the crypto. I am concerned that you would continue to state the popular misconception. This is, in fact, my one complaint with Julian's article in the Village Voice. Check out the first several chapters of David Kahn's "The Codebreakers". Cryptography originated with private individuals. Private individuals have *always* had access to and used cryptography at least as strong as that used by the military of the time. The few exceptions have been very short-lived and rare. My 4 examples for the T-shirt show a steady progression of strong cryptography in the hands of private citizens. I stopped at 4 to keep from making the T-shirt too busy. I *really* recommend reading Kahn about this. The notion that strong crypto in private hands is somehow new is totally bogus -- flattering to those of us who like to think we're better off than our parents or that we're exploring new ground -- but it's wrong and, even worse, it plays into the hands of the NSA and FBI. Once you start saying that citizens have "first time ever" access to strong crypto, the FBI is free to turn around and say "OK - now the gov't will have first time ever power to take strong crypto away from the people". Read Kahn. - Carl