Rating:  - Well-researched account
Light-hearted by nature, Steven Levy gives everything the proper treatment in an often amusing way without being irreverent, and he becomes serious where warranted.
This book presents a balanced perspective from both sides: privacy advocates who do not necessarily trust the government, and government authorities terrified of losing their precious wiretaps and other snooping capabilities. The actions of a few self-righteous, overzealous mavericks on both sides are recounted.
Examples of successful U.S. government eavesdropping are mentioned; for instance, it was monitoring that revealed that the Libyans were the bombers of Pan Am flight 103. There is example after example of how the antiquated, rigid NSA position that "crypto is munitions" stifled the ascendant American software industry in the 1990's by restricting exports, giving foreign competitors the edge, while the rest of the world already had strong crypto anyway! Asinine inconsistencies in the old export restrictions are cited. The players of the NSA, NIST, and Congress are named and events, from assembly bills to telling conversations, are recounted. I think most crypto enthusiasts will find this recap informative. It certainly filled in a lot of gaps for me!
The book does not pretend to be a primer on cryptography. Levy does his usual admirable job of reaching out to the masses with lay explanations and clever analogies, but this being specialized math, it will at times go over the heads of some readers. Levy has a good sense of how far to take a technical explanation before dropping it; he doesn't go around the bend. Historical cryptographic systems recounted in David Kahn's tome "The Codebreakers" are now passe, not just because computers do it faster, but also due to relatively recent mathematical discoveries. The chronology of those discoveries is told along with the human stories behind them --of those who yearned to understand the art of secret writing and came to realize that it boils down to hard adversarial mathematics.
The human story throughout is one of unassuming, unlikely geniuses whose discoveries got no immediate fanfare, rather taking decades to catch on. Today (ironically now that the patents have expired) those discoveries are in use every day by most people using the Internet, a cellular phone, or any other wireless device.
The book is at times dull. To me, the accounts of legislative machinations were slow-going but I don't see how they could be made more interesting.
Jim Bidzos is finally vindicated as a real hero of the crypto revolution (after being portrayed in a bad light in a book on PGP). Diffie/Hellman/Merkle, the Cypherpunks, anonymous remailers, Julf Helsingius and Penet, David Chaum and digital cash protocols, court decisions, the Clipper chip --it's all here.
Did government spooks discover public key crypto first, in secret? The book ends with the interesting and hitherto unknown story of James H. Ellis of the General Communications HQ, the British cousin of the NSA.
An index, a small glossary, and an appendix of references are included. Well done!
Rating:  - I suck at math.
But Levy had me hooked by the first chapter. I could not help but care about the characters he portrayed and their plight against the American government. A hectic pace drags you through the book, knowing that their discovery has to be in time to save all of our privacy. If you can't find yourself caring about that then this is not the book for you.
The highest course I've ever taken is pre-calc and I never use higher math in my daily life. So, I have to attribute my fanaticism to this book on Levy's writing and the power of the story itself. Also, the ideas are so well articulated that even a moron like me can pick up on most of the theory (albeit in a simplistic form).
I would recommend this to any one who has ever fought the establishment or anyone that has ever wanted to.
Rating: - I hate math!
But Levy had me hooked by the first chapter. I could not help but care about the characters he portrayed and their plight against the American government. A hectic pace drags you through the book, knowing that their discovery has to be in time to save all of our privacy. If you can't find yourself caring about that then this is not the book for you.
The highest course I've ever taken is pre-calc and I never use higher math in my daily life. So, I have to attribute my fanaticism to this book on Levy's writing and the power of the story itself. Also, the ideas are so well articulated that even a moron like me can pick up on most of the theory (albeit in a simplistic form).
I would recommend this to any one who has ever fought the establishment or anyone that has ever wanted to.
Rating: - WOW
An amazing exposition of the development of Crypto for the masses. Beautifully written so that the reader only needs a very small amount of technical understanding to read the book.
Rating: - Plaintext review :)
It was a great to learn about the origins of crypto and the different people which brought about this revolution to protect privacy of everyone.At times i admit i had to read a paragraph twice as it became confusing sometimes but all in all a great book and a must read for anyone interested in crypto.
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