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Keeping Secrets (2014)
Four decades ago, university researchers figured out the key to computer privacy, sparking a battle with the National Security Agency that continues today.
His findings had a strong legal basis: Two regulations governed classified information in the United States at the time—an executive order and the Atomic Energy Act of 1954—and neither seemed to prevent the publication of unclassified research on cryptography. The Cornell symposium was to begin three days after Schwartz offered his legal opinion; Hellman, Merkle and Pohlig had to quickly decide whether to proceed with their presentations in spite of the threat of prosecution, fines and jail time. Today, Inman acknowledges that the NSA was trying to strike a balance be-tween protecting domestic commercial communication and safeguarding its own ability to eavesdrop on foreign governments: "[T]he issue was to try to find a level of cryptography that ensured the privacy of individuals and companies against competitors.
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