Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
new approach. Diffie and Hellman's methods for accessing keys and for
the social organization of cryptography both explicitly eschewed central-
ized authority as inherently opaque and thus corruptible. In its place, they
proposed the transparency of publicly verifiable mathematical knowledge
and the resilience of the peer-review process. Cryptographic tools and
knowledge would thus move from a dysfunctional institutional context,
dominated by the needs of states for self-protection, to one regulated by
the scientific ethos of openness.
In the following two decades, cryptographers would tap into these
technical and symbolic resources to develop an exceptionally rich research
program, with explicit motivations to shape the politics of the emerging
socialities of computer networks. In this chapter, I revisit some episodes of
this vibrant period, when the emergence of Internet politics, the feverish
pace of the dot-com gold rush, and the scientific possibilities unleashed by
the public-key paradigm uniquely combined to form an unusual experi-
ment in mathematics as agent of social change.
Some of these episodes have already been well documented. The “crypto
wars,” a series of public clashes between the cryptographic and intelligence
communities over censorship of scientific communication, public access
to strong encryption tools, and governmental wiretapping of the digital
infrastructure, regularly made the headlines throughout the 1980s and the
1990s. It is not my purpose here to revisit debates that have been exten-
sively covered elsewhere.
3
Instead, I want to highlight some of the less
visible tensions that accompanied the spectacular growth of the crypto-
graphic community, from the publication of “New Directions” to the end
of the first Internet bubble.
First, although the cryptographic community political identity was
most visibly associated with cyberlibertarianism, this proposition was far
from self-evident within the community itself. In particular, the various
research agendas that emerged as the field sought to define its future course
included a broad range of positions on the social role of cryptography,
including conservative law-and-order ones. Second, though prominent
cryptolibertarians argued extensively that access to strong cryptography
was essential to secure the potential of the Internet as a political tool, they
also very much understood that potential in terms of new opportunities
for business and commerce. As well, the vibrancy of the field originated in
no small part from the ambition of prominent figures (e.g., David Chaum)
