Privacy on the Line Privacy on the Line Review of Privacy on the Line by Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau. My guess is that no reader of this hasn't heard of PGP and of Phil Zimmermann's travails with the grand jury. Another grand jury, nearly a decade later, is currently investigating evidence obtained through the wiretapping of a White House intern. What Diffie and Landau is about is typified by these two incidents. In the seventy years since, more and more information travels through phone wires, harvesting that information electronically has become quite profitable.
Encryption is one such obstacle.
In this truly important yet readable volume, Diffie and Landau discuss at length the domestic politics of wiretapping and of encryption.