On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, Alan Olsen wrote:
I also recommend a list of books that piss people off while reading. Things like "The ICSA Guide to Cryptography". (The most pro-GAK crypto book I have ever read. I keep it as a reminder of which libraries and products to avoid.)
I've only had occasion to flip through this in a bookstore. I remember thinking that it could have used another 2 or 3 re-edits. Also that its treatment of semantic security and probabilistic encryption was pretty bad. Must have missed the pro-GAK stuff. I think one of the books which made me wonder "what the hell" was _The Frozen Republic_ in the last part -- the author argues that separation of powers is an outmoded and silly concept, our government can't act fast enough, and wouldn't we be better off with a British style system for doing things which didn't have all these checks and balances? With due respect to British readers, I think the RIP act shows one of the reasons why we would not be better off. Not that our own equivalent isn't far behind; haven't there been murmurs for a while about making "the use of cryptography in committing a crime" a separate crime? :-\ -david