Techdirt Reading List: More Crypto Books

from the read-up dept

Thu, Mar 3rd 2016 12:45pm — Mike Masnick

We're back again with another in our weekly reading list posts of books we think our community will find interesting and thought provoking. Once again, buying the book via the Amazon links in this story also helps support Techdirt.

Two weeks ago for the Techdirt Reading List, we talked about two books that discussed the original crypto wars in the 1990s: Steven Levy's Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government--Saving Privacy in the Digital Age and Laura Gurak's Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace: The Online Protests over Lotus MarketPlace and the Clipper Chip. In the comments, many of you suggested some other worthwhile books, so I wanted to add those as well.

First up, there's Simon Singh's The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, which looks really fantastic, going through the history of encryption. I haven't read it yet, but from the description and the reviews, it looks wonderful and it's going to move to the top of my personal reading list. Then there's Bruce Schneier's The Electronic Privacy Papers: Documents on the Battle for Privacy in the Age of Surveillance. And finally, Peter Ludlow's Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias -- which also looks great, but is insanely expensive, either in harcopy or (ridiculously) digital ($27.89 for the Kindle edition?!?!). I'll mention it here, but at that price who do they think is actually buying it?

Either way, looks like there's lots of good reading to do on the encryption issue.

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Filed Under: crypto, encryption, reading list, techdirt reading list

5 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 3 Mar 2016 @ 12:58pm

Tracking price drops
" ($27.89 for the Kindle edition?!?!). I'll mention it here, but at that price who do they think is actually buying it? "

http://www.ereaderiq.com/track/

allows you to set up watch lists to track price drops on Kindle books. (I have no connection with the site but do use it.) Maybe there are other similar sites.

Thanks for the list.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 3 Mar 2016 @ 2:12pm

Re: Tracking price drops
Hey that's neat...
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mistercynical (profile), 4 Mar 2016 @ 2:19am

David Kahn "The Codebreakers". I bought the first edition of this book when I was in tech school for the then Air Force Security Service in about 1967. I only knew about it because we were told if anybody asked about the book to say "no comment" (NSA: Never Say Anything). There is a new edition which is also insanely expensive. This is the best overall history of cryptography in general but I don't know how up to date the latest edition is on computer cryptography. Find a used copy of the first edition for the general history. You won't regret it.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Mar 2016 @ 7:01am

Re: Tracking price drops
Actually, DRM doesn't help anyone.
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mattshow (profile), 4 Mar 2016 @ 7:28am

The Simon Singh book is fantastic. I read it years ago and it contributed to me eventually getting a math degree.
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