Crypto Wars

CryptoWars is the first, and definitive, book of its kind. CryptoWars offers a history of the half century contest between the US government and its citizens to control digital cryptography, a technology allowing citizens to place their communications beyond the State's reach, thus undermining law enforcement and intelligence capabilities. Thus, CryptoWars is in part a history of how society balances security and privacy, whilst it also explores the power dynamic between citizenry and state, in the digital age.

Tipping the scales to extremes in either direction could lead to an Orwellian nightmare, or a State unable to deliver security to its citizens. This issue typically leads news cycles, and with President Donald Trump recently tweeting about the crypto wars it is expected there will be significant political activity on, and public interest in, the topic during coming years.

Whilst principally a history book on a technology topic, CryptoWars draws in

• Socio-economic elements (e.g. how hippies became hackers, and how tech titans sought to rule the world),
• Legal issues at play (e.g. the laws over which the right to digital privacy were fought),
• Geopolitical themes (e.g. how the CIA used a covert operation to sell their enemies encryption the NSA built),
• Myriad other complex disciplines, making a seemingly prosaic topic an exciting read.

Digital privacy will be one of the most important factors in how we design twenty-first century societies, and its management is paramount to our stewardship of freedom and liberty for future generations. We need to elevate the quality of public debate on cryptography, on how we balance security and privacy, or else society could sleep walk into a state where the future power balance between state and citizen is decided without due consideration. CryptoWars is written to provide the foundation for the requisite higher quality of debate.