Book Review: The Code Book By Simon Singh

1065 Words3 Pages

Book review: The Code Book by Simon Singh The Code Book by Simon Singh starts with the story of Mary Queen of Scots who was assassinated because she failed to communicate her message using strong coding system (p. 44). From the beginning of the book, Singh establishes the importance of coding to communicate messages. This book was easy to read, very engaging and has lost of humor in it. The stories continuous from the ‘unbreakable’ Vigenere cipher in the nineteenth century to the present developments of public-key and quantum cryptography. Throughout the book, he makes historical connections that are relevant to the topic. He incorporates the importance of cryptography during war time to communicate information from one station to other. …show more content…

295).” RAS was unbreakable but it wasn’t commonly used by the public. Phil Zimmermann, a computer scientist created Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) that could be easily downloaded and used by public to secure their information. As the result, Zimmermann was under the criminal investigation of the United States Customs Service because using his software anyone could encipher information which was unbreakable. With the creation of PGP, the dilemma of cryptography continues. In today’s world of information, cryptography has become more important than ever. The reason behind Zimmermann creating PGP was that he believed on freedom of information and privacy. He believed that everyone should be able to communicate without being wiretapped or watched. As a general citizen, I also believe that I should have right to privacy and information. If the government thinks that PGP compromises the state’s security, they should come up with different strategy and technology that helps them to monitor criminal

Open Document