Rating: 
Summary: Great coverage of modern cryptography.
Review: Light-hearted by nature, Steven Levy gives everything the proper treatment in an often amusing way without being irreverent, becoming properly serious where warranted.
This book is well researched and 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 appalling 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 quite an 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 passé, 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:
Summary: Gripping
Review: Mr. Levy needs to write more books. Crypto is an excellent examination of modern day cryptography inteleaved with intrigue. It's just a stupendous story that will blow your hair back. When you finish this book, the first thing you will do is go find out what happens where Levy leaves off. Exellent book.
Rating:
Summary: As Important As Insurance or the Bill of Rights
Review: Public key encryption has the potential to be as important an invention of the mind as insurance and money have been to advancing material well being, and as the US constitution (particularly the Bill of Rights) has been to the preservation of an individual's political freedom. On a technical level, the book makes the concepts of crypto very easy to understand. This is also a fascinating story, filled with twists and ironies, as well as characters and a plot line you could not make up. More important, the story is not over. Anyone that wants to understand the myriad technical and politcal issues that will continue to surround crypto should read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Goes "Behind the Firewall" for an Insider's Account
Review: Riveting true stories that are well researched. Levy weaves an intriguing account of cryptography's "eccentric patriots" and their dedication to the craft. It is primarily a story of people and the government politics that tried to ensnare them, not a treatise on ciphers and hashing algorithms. Explanations of cryptography are lucid, even if math wasn't your best subject.It's an excellent addition to American historical literature that we've sorely lacked after 50 years of Cold War stifled journalists from reporting details about anything that might threaten national security. Non-fiction literature buffs and researchers will appreciate the copious endnotes, glossary, and index. While it also includes an extensive bibliography, Levy conducted many interviews to write this original work.
Rating:
Summary: Goes "Behind the Firewall" for an Insider's Account
Review: Riveting true stories that are well researched. Levy weaves an intriguing account of cryptography's "eccentric patriots" and their dedication to the craft. It is primarily a story of people and the government politics that tried to ensnare them, not a treatise on ciphers and hashing algorithms. Explanations of cryptography are lucid, even if math wasn't your best subject. It's an excellent addition to American historical literature that we've sorely lacked after 50 years of Cold War stifled journalists from reporting details about anything that might threaten national security. Non-fiction literature buffs and researchers will appreciate the copious endnotes, glossary, and index. While it also includes an extensive bibliography, Levy conducted many interviews to write this original work.
Rating:
Summary: Goes "Behind the Firewall" for an Insider's Account
Review: Riviting true stories that are well-researched. Levy weaves an intriguing account of cryptography's "eccentric patriots" and their dedication to the craft. It's primarily a story of people and the government politics that tried to ensnare them, not a treatise on ciphers and hashing algorithms. Explanations of cryptography are lucid, even if math wasn't your best subject. It's an excellent addition to American historical literature that we've sorely lacked after 50 years of Cold War stifled journalists from reporting details about anything that might threaten national security. Non-fiction literature buffs and researchers will appreciate the copious endnotes, glossary, and index. While it also includes an extensive bibliography, Levy conducted many interviews to write this original work.
Rating: 
Summary: Required reading in a post-WTC world
Review: Since the September 11th attacks, a lot of politicans are discussing bringing back the idea of a key escrow system ala "Clipper Chip." This book is required reading for all thos people who don't understand why it is impossible to stop cryptography in the Internet age.
Rating: 
Summary: Dry but informational
Review: Steve Levy presents an accurate picture of the events surrounding todays crypto debate in his book "Crypto." Unfortunately, he does it with the same narrative style he uses for his magazine articles. The result is that the events are correct, but the story unfolds more like a textbook, not a novel. Overall, it is an interesting (if dry) read, and, at times will add words (a la Neal Stephenson in Cryptonomicon) to your vocabulary. If you are interested in the history of todays debates on cryptography, I recommend it. If you want to know more about cyphers and other code making/breaking, I would recommend something like Simon Singh's "The Code Book."
Rating: 
Summary: A tabloid history
Review: Steven Levy is not a good writer, but he desperately wants to be a popular one. "Crypto" sees him fawn all over the cypherpunks in a way that would do the likes of Barbara Walters proud. The book suffers in two ways because of this: not only is Levy intent on brown-nosing his libertarian pals, but he can't be much bothered painting their opponents as more than paranoid pencil pushers. If you're looking for two-dimensional characters with just enough personality to flesh out a 500-word magazine story, you've come to the right place. As if this weren't enough, Levy's history as a hack working for the likes of Newsweek and Wired has lent his prose a hyperbolic air. Almost every one of his sentences wants to have an exclamation mark at its end! And many do! Worse, his technical descriptions manage to be both condescending and often incorrect (he completely misses the invalidity of non-repudiation in public-key cryptosystems, for example). Simon Singh's "Code Book" does a much better job of describing technical details of cryptography without making the reader feel like a semi-literate Newsweek reader. Singh's "Code Book" drifts off into incoherence in describing the technology and politics of the last few decades of crypto history, in what is otherwise an excellent book. This weakness of Singh's should be Levy's strength, since it is the entire focus of "Crypto". Levy, with his undeniable ability to butter people up and get them talking, and several hundred more pages to spare than did Singh in his closing chapters, ought to be capable of an excellent job of filling in the missing details. Unfortunately, Levy is happy to settle for a cast of characters and set of plotlines that would do more justice to a "Superfriends" comic book. The libertarian crypto geeks use their magical mathematical powers to fight the evil government control droids, and win! Levy has turned a truly fascinating tale into a breathless pile of twaddle. If anyone takes this book seriously, they're missing out on a far more complex and compelling story that has yet to be told with the care and detail it deserves.
Rating:
Summary: A major contribution about to the History of crypto
Review: This book is a contribution to the History of crypto and computing, assuming that this history changes very much our everyday life even if we are not into computer field.
It focuses on the story of the people who opened the crypto Pandora's box, allowing todays e-business long before the word was even invented. It starts with Whit Diffie (Diffie-Hellman) in the late 60's, through Rivest, Shamir and Adleman (RSA) and ends with Zimmerman (Pgp) and Helsingius (remailer). It also follows other conributors to crypto and business people (eg. : from RSA, Lotus) as well as some politicians and people involved at the NSA.
The author describes the oppositions between the pro-crypto-for-everyone and the US government, the government self-contradictions and oppositions with the tech firms. This includes facts about the NSA, the Clipper Chip issue, the patents problems, etc. These are always seen from the viewpoint of the various people involved at that time.
It is easy to read and does not need any technical or maths background. If focuses on the people. It does not discuss the subject : it tells us the story.
If you are looking for a book about crypto in order to understand "how it works", forget this book. If you want to understand how people with one obsession can change the world, just read it.
The author manages suspens very well, from the beginning to the end. This book is hard to close : you really want to get to the next page.
So why not 5 stars ? Because I think this book could have been perfect with just a few diagrams showing the crypto algorithm (eg. : differences between Diffie-Hellman and RSA are not clear). Ok... ok... I give 5 stars only to books which change my life. This one is exciting, informative and well written, but not to that point.
|
