The Untold Story Of The Man That Made Mainstream Encryption Possible

https://onezero.medium.com/the-untold-story-of-the-man-that-made-mainstream-encryption-possible-231c749d5005

Bailey Whitfield Diffie, born June 5, 1944, was always an independent sort. As one early friend remarked, “The kid had an alternative lifestyle at age five.” Diffie didn’t read until he was 10 years old. There was no question of disability, he simply preferred that his parents read to him, which seemingly they did, quite patiently. Finally, in the fifth grade, Diffie spontaneously worked his way through a tome called The Space Cat, and immediately progressed to the Oz books.

Later that year his teacher at P.S. 178 — “Her name was Mary Collins and if she is still alive I’d like to find her,” Diffie would say decades later — spent an afternoon explaining something that would stick with him for a very long time: the basics of cryptography.

Diffie found cryptography a delightfully conspiratorial means of expression. Its users collaborate to keep secrets in a world of prying eyes. A sender attempts this by transforming a private message to an altered state, a sort of mystery language: encryption. Once the message is transformed into a cacophonous babble, potential eavesdroppers are foiled. Only those in possession of the rules of transformation can restore the disorder back to the harmony of the message as it was first inscribed: decryption. Those who don’t have that knowledge and try to decrypt messages without the secret “keys” are practicing “cryptanalysis.”

Although Diffie performed competently in school, he never did apply himself. Only stratospheric scores on standardized tests enabled him to enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961 to study mathematics. He took up computer programming — at first, Diffie now says, to get out of the draft. Diffie accepted a job at the Mitre Corporation, which, as a defense contractor, could shelter its young employees from military service.

Diffie’s team did not have to work at the Mitre office, but in 1966, became a resident guest of Marvin Minsky in the MIT artificial intelligence lab. At the AI lab, information was assumed to be accessible as the air itself. There were no software locks on the operating system written by the MIT wizards.

>>8314096

Q said that we are negotiating for return of @Snowden, and clearly wants to see that occur this year. However, I don't think this will happen so easily.

Here's why: If Putin were to return @Snowden, that would signal to any future traitor/defectors that Russia isn't loyal to their traitors. I heard he's in a retirement community reserved for senior Russian Intelligence Officers, living essentially out in the open. If they treat him well, grant him citizenship and safe harbor for the remainder of his life, then future traitors will be more likely to defect to Russia.