The prediction, in brief:

Electronic communication will be the fabric of tommorow’s society, and we will have daily interaction with intimates that we can only rarely afford to visit in person. By codifying the government’s power to spy invisibly on these contacts, we take a giant step toward a world in which privacy belongs only to the wealthy, the powerful, and, perhaps, the criminals.

Predictor: Diffie, Whitfield

Prediction, in context:

In a 1993 article for The New York Times, John Markoff quotes Whitfield Diffie, a computer researcher at Sun Microsystems and one of the nation’s leading cryptographers:”Electronic communication will be the fabric of tomorrow’s society, and we will have daily interaction with intimates that we can only rarely afford to visit in person. By codifying the government’s power to spy invisibly on these contacts, we take a giant step toward a world in which privacy belongs only to the wealthy, the powerful, and, perhaps, the criminals.”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1993

Topic of prediction: Communication

Subtopic: Security/Encryption

Name of publication: New York Times

Title, headline, chapter name: Wrestling Over the Keys to the Codes

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=c5ad24160d755ca0ebca11d31aa19d4b&_docnum=2&wchp=dGLbVlz-lSlzV&_md5=4acffe20aa26f6e04e996136a074c62f

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Fedders, Peter J.