Cryptography

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the ancient "art" of keeping a secret, cryptography, has joined the age of technology, computerization, and intergalactic communication. The author points out that the government agencies entrusted with maintaining security in the United States have not followed a strictly open path in limiting public access to cryptographic methods. The paper relates that, with the Financial Anti-Terrorism Act, passed in October of 2001, restrictions on surveillance have been reduced, while penalties for low-level computer intrusion are greatly increased.

From the Paper:

"In the late 1970s, American cryptographers were busy working within the quickly evolving world of the Internet. "This academic revolution--the development of a public science of cryptography and a resulting colloquy about it--was accompanied by a similar, equally dramatic revolution on the microcomputer front. The result: Ordinary people with desk top PCs could encrypt their messages or data to a degree that only governments could have achieved not long before" (Godwin 45). Maintaining secrets had come to be seen as "collecting intelligence" a service provided by a number of government agencies in the United States. Military "intelligence" has also always had the extra burden of maintaining secrets in order to save lives. Probably every nation on earth gathers information concerning the political and military status of other nations."

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