Includes documents, news items, reports from government agencies, legislative proposals, summary of laws, and public statements intended to provide an overview of the critical issues in today's policy debate. Both sides of an issue are fairly presented. Includes: wiretapping and digital telephony (FBI report on implementing the Communications Assist. for Law Enforce. Act); the clipper chip debate (public key status report; clipper encryption); key escrow (clipper III analysis), and export controls (internat. market for computer software with encryption).

Includes documents, news items, reports from government agencies, legislative proposals, summary of laws, & public statements intended to provide an overview of the critical issues in today's policy debate. Both sides of an issue are fairly presented. Includes: wiretapping & digital telephony (FBI report on implementing the Communications Assist. for Law Enforce. Act); the clipper chip debate (public key status report; clipper encryption); key escrow (clipper III analysis), & export controls (internat. market for computer software with encryption).

Includes documents, news items, reports from government agencies, legislative proposals, summary of laws, and public statements intended to provide an overview of the critical issues in today's policy debate. Both sides of an issue are fairly presented. Includes: digital telephony; the clipper chip and the encryption debate; information warfare: documents on the Security Policy Board and other efforts to undermine the Computer Security Act; and export controls and international views on encryption. Illustrated.

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.

"The authors . . . bring wide-ranging experience to this work, moving from theory to hands-on, bit-shoveling practical advice." -Steven M. Bellovin A serious security sourcebook for Web professionals and users. The front door is unlocked and wide open. The alarm's not working and no one's home. All of your valuables, money, and intimate details of your life are just sitting inside, waiting to be taken. No, it's not your house . . . it's your computer. The Web now penetrates every aspect of our lives, from the home PC to the business office. But with each advance in convenience comes a geometric increase in vulnerability to the integrity of data and software as well as to the confidentiality of information. Although the flaws inherent in the Web are real, solutions are available. Let Aviel Rubin, Daniel Geer, and Marcus Ranum give you the answers. Here's a book that's valuable today and indispensable for the future. It includes basic and advanced techniques for client-side and server-side security, browser security, writing secure CGI scripts, firewalls, and secure e-commerce. There's a special appendix that demystifies the complex world of cryptography. And the book comes with access to a dedicated Web site containing up-to-the-minute information on the latest security threats and solutions. So whether you're a Webmaster trying to close the door on sites and applications, or an everyday user hoping to keep your desktop safe, this is your essential source on: * Protecting and securing Web pages, search engines, servers, and browsers * Writing impregnable applets and scripts, and avoiding the dangers inherent in every language * Using (and abusing) firewalls and cryptographic controls * Securing commerce and payment transactions

In the mid-1970s, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman invented public key cryptography, an innovation that ultimately changed the world. Today public key cryptography provides the primary basis for secure communication over the internet, enabling online work, socializing, shopping, government services, and much more. While other books have documented the development of public key cryptography, this is the first to provide a comprehensive insiders’ perspective on the full impacts of public key cryptography, including six original chapters by nine distinguished scholars. The book begins with an original joint biography of the lives and careers of Diffie and Hellman, highlighting parallels and intersections, and contextualizing their work. Subsequent chapters show how public key cryptography helped establish an open cryptography community and made lasting impacts on computer and network security, theoretical computer science, mathematics, public policy, and society. The volume includes particularly influential articles by Diffie and Hellman, as well as newly transcribed interviews and Turing Award Lectures by both Diffie and Hellman. The contributed chapters provide new insights that are accessible to a wide range of readers, from computer science students and computer security professionals, to historians of technology and members of the general public. The chapters can be readily integrated into undergraduate and graduate courses on a range of topics, including computer security, theoretical computer science and mathematics, the history of computing, and science and technology policy.

For every opportunity presented by the information age, there is an opening to invade the privacy and threaten the security of the nation, U.S. businesses, and citizens in their private lives. The more information that is transmitted in computer-readable form, the more vulnerable we become to automated spying. It's been estimated that some 10 billion words of computer-readable data can be searched for as little as $1. Rival companies can glean proprietary secrets . . . anti-U.S. terrorists can research targets . . . network hackers can do anything from charging purchases on someone else's credit card to accessing military installations. With patience and persistence, numerous pieces of data can be assembled into a revealing mosaic. Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society addresses the urgent need for a strong national policy on cryptography that promotes and encourages the widespread use of this powerful tool for protecting of the information interests of individuals, businesses, and the nation as a whole, while respecting legitimate national needs of law enforcement and intelligence for national security and foreign policy purposes. This book presents a comprehensive examination of cryptography--the representation of messages in code--and its transformation from a national security tool to a key component of the global information superhighway. The committee enlarges the scope of policy options and offers specific conclusions and recommendations for decision makers. Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society explores how all of us are affected by information security issues: private companies and businesses; law enforcement and other agencies; people in their private lives. This volume takes a realistic look at what cryptography can and cannot do and how its development has been shaped by the forces of supply and demand. How can a business ensure that employees use encryption to protect proprietary data but not to conceal illegal actions? Is encryption of voice traffic a serious threat to legitimate law enforcement wiretaps? What is the systemic threat to the nation's information infrastructure? These and other thought-provoking questions are explored. Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society provides a detailed review of the Escrowed Encryption Standard (known informally as the Clipper chip proposal), a federal cryptography standard for telephony promulgated in 1994 that raised nationwide controversy over its "Big Brother" implications. The committee examines the strategy of export control over cryptography: although this tool has been used for years in support of national security, it is increasingly criticized by the vendors who are subject to federal export regulation. The book also examines other less well known but nevertheless critical issues in national cryptography policy such as digital telephony and the interplay between international and national issues. The themes of Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society are illustrated throughout with many examples -- some alarming and all instructive -- from the worlds of government and business as well as the international network of hackers. This book will be of critical importance to everyone concerned about electronic security: policymakers, regulators, attorneys, security officials, law enforcement agents, business leaders, information managers, program developers, privacy advocates, and Internet users.

Focuses on the possibility of creating serious security risks by housing wiretapping within communication infrastructure and whether widespread communications surveillance enhances or endangers national security. Landau explains that understanding whether building wiretapping into communication infrastructure keeps us safe requires that we understand the technology, economics, law, and policy issues of communication surveillance technologies. She offers a set of principles to govern wiretapping policy that will allow us to protect our national security as well as our freedom.