Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie revolutionized cryptography by creating a digital signature, making codes accessible for public use. The good news is that, after decades of struggle against a government opposed to its widespread use, we've finally got access to crypto-software that does . . .
Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie revolutionized cryptography by creating a digital signature, making codes accessible for public use. The good news is that, after decades of struggle against a government opposed to its widespread use, we've finally got access to crypto-software that does the scrambling, as well as other functions like those "digital signatures" that will authenticate that we are who we say we are in cyberspace. You might not see the crypto, but it's there, going into action every time your browser tells you it's going into the mysterious "secure mode." What should alarm you is the degree to which it still isn't there-in the millions of medical records, credit-card databases and midnight e-mail confessions available to the window-shoppers of cyberspace-and government sniffers. We can attribute that failure to the government's active opposition, which was largely overcome only a year ago, with the relaxation of export laws limiting privacy technologies.