It has been thoughtlessly said … that cryptography brings the unprecedented promise of absolute privacy. In fact, it only goes a short way to make up for the loss of an assurance of privacy that can never be regained.
Predictor: Diffie, Whitfield
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Steven Levy, an expert technology reporter, interviews Whitfield Diffie, the inventor of public-key cryptography. He responds to the controversy over the U.S. government’s proposed “Clipper” encryption chip, which would allow government agencies to gain access to citizens’ private data. Levy writes: ”Earlier this spring, Diffie had the opportunity to explain some of these ideas to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology and the Law, chaired by Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, who shares Diffie’s skepticism about the Clipper Chip … He walked the committee through the privacy problem from the 1790s to the present day and beyond and laid out the Clipper controversy in dazzling context. Crypto, he argued, will not upset the balance of power by giving the individual a huge edge over the government – instead we should see it as one of the few resources available to the individual who wants some privacy. ‘It has been thoughtlessly said … that cryptography brings the unprecedented promise of absolute privacy,’ testified Diffie. ‘In fact, it only goes a short way to make up for the loss of an assurance of privacy that can never be regained.’ In the flurry of concepts, however, few appreciated the resonance of Diffie’s opening sentences. They summed up Whitfield Diffie’s progress since he began his quest more than two decades ago. ‘I first began thinking about cryptography in 1972,’ he testified. ‘My feeling was that cryptography was vitally important for personal privacy, and my goal was to make it better known. I am pleased to say that if I have succeeded in nothing else, I have achieved that goal.'”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Privacy/Surveillance
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Prophet of Privacy: Whitfield Diffie Took Cryptography Out of the Hands of the Spooks and Made Privacy Possibly in the Digital Age – By Inventing the Most Revolutionary Concept in Encryption Since the Renaissance
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.11/diffie_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney