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... f encoding and decoding information is called encryption. Historically, encryption was used only in the military and for diplomatic reasons. Reasons that deal with Fiske's theory of power.
The government wanted to ensure that they ultimately had sole power of the encryption outflow. They have kept tight reins on the "keys" used to translate coded text into plaintext, prohibiting the export of secret codes under United States munitions laws and ensuring that the encryption scheme used by businesses was weak enough that the National Security Agency's supercomputers could cut through it like butter (Elmer-Dewitt, 1). However, this has now changed. Cryptography is now used to authenticate retail transactions, secure electronic funds transfers, the military, email, to protect the integrity of software and stored data, and to authenticate the identity of network users (Summers, 45 - 46). Although, the export of encryption outflow is still regulated by the government. By using encryption you can disguise the message so that if it is intercepted, the contents will not be revealed.
The cycle of encryption is easy to understand. The original message is written in plaintext, the message is then encoded by a crypto system. This text is called ciphertext. The ciphertext message is sent to the receiver, where it is decoded back to plaintext (Pfleeger, 22). This simple method of cryptography is very efficient in securing peoples privacy. Hacking an encrypted message is virtually impossible to achieve.
Encryption software due to its highly mathematical nature, resists giving up its secrets, even to exports, because the output of the program is entirely dependent on a key value given to the program when it runs (Time, 217). For this very reason, encryption is becoming known as a virtually foolproof method in ensuring privacy. However, obtaining the privilege of encryption is difficult. Businesses who are allowed the use of cryptography have to pay a lot of money to use it. This is the governments way of ensuring their right to control the amount of privacy people can have. The government explains this use of power as their way of protecting citizens from terrorist and spies.
The government says that in order to protect citizens from these kinds of dangers that they must control the use of cryptography. However, a guy by the name of Phil Zimmerman did not find this reason Phil Zimmerman came up with the idea of PGP or Pretty Good Privacy. PGP is another method of computer privacy. Zimmerman's passion for politics, computers, and privacy led him to the production of Pretty Good Privacy. He essentially believed that the power of privacy should be shared with the "have nots. " Zimmerman thought that people needed to be protected from democracy. "PGP empowers people to take their privacy into their own hands, " Phil Zimmerman (Bacard, 128).
After Zimmerman was finished with PGP, he gave it to a friend to try it out. His friend liked it so much that he gave PGP to his friends, and they liked it, so they passed it on. Before Zimmerman knew it, people all over the world were using PGP within months. Bulletin Board Systems and Internet sites around the world made PGP available to their users (Bacard, 128). However, when PGP was released, it ran into some political and governmental troubles. Two legal issues whirled around the original freeware PGP.
First, was the issue of patents. PGP uses the technology of RSA, a public key algorithm (Bacard, 81). RSA stand for Rivest, Shamir and Adelman, the creators of the algorithm (Bacard, 81). The second problem with the distribution of PGP was that it spread outside of the United States and possibly violated United States cryptography export restrictions. The issue of patents with RSA was dropped because the company that now distributes PGP bought the rights to RSA. The investigations on the export of PGP were dropped in 1996.
In spite of all this, PGP was a big success with businesses and Internet users. PGP is a software program that uses encryption to secure the information. Bob Smart who has written a front-end program for PGP says that, "PGP does not so much increase privacy as it does restore a balance that has recently been perpetuated away from privacy, " Bob Smart (Bacard, 138). It is an easy-to-use secure computer program that encrypts and decrypts messages (Bacard, 128). PGP is law-abiding despite its brush with the law in the beginning. The government did not want to allow PGP to be distributed to everyday people because they did not want people to have the privacy they deserve.
The imperializing powers thought that they could control the encrypted outflow of information that localizing powers had. Phil Zimmerman distributed PGP for free because he did not want to become part of the imperializing powers. In the end, PGP was allowed to be used in the United States and was recognized as a foolproof method of ensuring privacy. Top-rate cryptographers and computer exports have tried to break the PGP crypto system - without luck (Bacard, 137). PGP has been compared with having it take 600 locksmiths several months to unlock the front door to your house, but you could change the lock in five minutes. So, in the amount of time and the number of people it would take to decode your PGP decoded message is a long, long time.
Computer privacy is important to people, and especially the government. With the society in which we live, privacy is hard to come by, but something everyone desires. The government has tried to control the amounts of privacy that people can have, and to their dismay it has not worked. Everyday people have the right to protect their information as does the government theirs. Just as the government has found a method to protect their information so have everyday citizens.
Passwords, PGP and cryptography are all methods that both powers can and do use. The technology and practice of computer security has responded to the rapid changes in context. The people have also responded to these changes and have demanded privacy. The imperializing powers will always try to control the amount of privacy people can have as long as privacy is about power, and the localizing powers will always be under control of the imperializing powers, unless we keep fighting against the government. Phil Zimmerman managed to distribute PGP to help the localizing powers fight against the imperializing powers. The imperializing powers will always have control over the less fortune, localizing powers as long as we let them.
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