Louis Freeh and the 1996 Demand for Digital Backdoors
The state spent decades trying to ensure no citizen could whisper in private. Louis Freeh's 1996 testimony sought to kill encryption in the name of public safety.
By Marcus Boone ·
Encryption
Jerry Berman and the 1997 Fight to Break the State's Lock on Encryption
For decades, the state treated encryption as a weapon of war to keep its eavesdropping intact; Jerry Berman fought to break that lock before the digital age was fully shuttered.
By Marcus Boone ·
Ted Phillips and the 1997 Mapping of Information Warfare
While the government fought to break encryption in 1997, a consultant for the intelligence community was mapping the gaps in our privacy—a plan kept unclassified only in its most sanitized form.
By Miriam Adler ·
James R. Taylor and the 1999 Push to Trade Signals for Spies
A secret memorandum from 1999 reveals an NSA blinded by advanced encryption and forced to lean on the CIA to track targets that the record still refuses to name.
By Marcus Boone ·
Jerry Berman and the 1996 Battle to Lock the Internet
A South African engineer warned the Senate that the state was breaking the web's privacy to maintain its watch, a plea the FBI would systematically dismantle one month later.
By Marcus Boone ·
Qualcomm's Philip R. Karn Jr. and the 1997 Fight Over Code as a Weapon
A technical manual was treated as a munition to keep encryption under lock and key; the record of the fight is unclassified, but the strategic motive for the deception remains obscured.
By Marcus Boone ·
Guttman and the 1995 Blueprint for Federal Encryption
A 200-page guide to computer security served as the public face of a government struggle over encryption backdoors and state surveillance, kept under wraps until recently.
By Marcus Boone ·