Interesting Cryptography
- Interesting Quotes:
From David Kahn's ``The Codebreakers'' (look in references):
- ``It must be that as soon as a culture has reached
a certain level, probably measured largely by its
literacy, cryptography appears spontaneously -- as its
parents, language and writing, probably also did. The
multiple human needs and desires that demand privacy
among two or more people in the midst of social life
must inevitably lead to cryptology wherever men thrive
and wherever they write. Cultural diffusion seems a
less likely explanation for its occurrence in so many
areas, many of them distant and isolated.'' [p. 84]
- ``It was the amateurs of cryptology who created the
species. The professionals, who almost certainly
surpassed them in cryptanalytic expertise, concentrated
on down-to-earth problems of the systems that were then
in use but are now outdated. The amateurs, unfettered
to those realities, soared into the empyrean of
theory.'' [pp. 125-6]
- The invention of cryptography is not limited to
either civilians or the government. Wherever the need
for secrecy is felt, the invention occurs. However,
over time the quality of the best available system
continues to improve and those best systems were often
invented by civilians.
- "Eternal Vigilance Is The Price of Liberty" used to
mean we watched the government - not the other way
around. [Bill Stewart, quoted by Jim Ebright]
- "The government can have my crypto key when it
pries it from my cold, dead neurons." [John Perry
Barlow, ca. 1991]
- Interesting Cryptography Fact: The NSA (National
Security Agency) employs the most mathematicians in the world
for the purpose of cryptoanalysis.
Copyright 1997 by Slackers Union. Comments should go to any of the
group members. Opinions reflected on this page are by no means
opinions
of UCSD. Go sue somebody else.
Last Modified: June 1st, 1997
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