Talk:Whitfield Diffie/Archives/2013

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Article does not represent very well the magnitude of Diffie's contributions

Latest comment: 10 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

I'm reading today an old The New York Times Magazine, in hardcopy form, dated June 12, 1994 / Section 6. The cover story article is about Diffie and a few others. Diffie's (large) headshot photo takes up 90% of the cover and the cover text reads: "Whitfield Diffie's amazing breakthrough could guarantee computer privacy. But the Government, fearing crime and terror, wants to co-opt his magic key and listen in. Now it's crypto-war on the electronic frontier." The cover is entitled The Cypherpunks vs. Uncle Sam Inside is a six-page, large-magazine-format article with much more info/story.^[1] I've added a citation to that source for future use. I will plan to come back to this, read the entire article, and then perhaps update the Diffie WP page if someone doesn't get to it before me. N2e (talk) 15:40, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

^ Levy, Stephen (1994-07-12). "Battle of the Clipper Chip". New York Times Magazine. pp. 44–51, plus cover. Whitfield Diffie's amazing breakthrough could guarantee computer privacy. But the Government, fearing crime and terror, wants to co-opt his magic key and listen in. Now it's crypto-war on the electronic frontier. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

I just observed that the external links in the article have several online sources that look substantive, but have not yet been incorporated into the main text of the article. N2e (talk) 16:07, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I Agree, I had the same feeling when recently updating some links that more should be available on Whitfield Diffie. Looking foreward to your edits. -- SchreyP (talk) 19:47, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I have written a small stub section to summarize Diffie's important contributions to the field of cryptography, and have included substantial quotation from the New York Time Magazine article as well, since I have been unable to find an accessible online source for this material. I quoted from a hardcopy I was able to consult.

I tried to include all of the important Diffie biographical info in the quotation I included, so that others might extend and use the information in other parts of the article as well. Cheers. N2e (talk) 03:14, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Diffie is currently a focal point in a lawsuit concerning the origins of pubkey. TGCP (talk) 16:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

[nytm19940712-1] Levy, Stephen (1994-07-12). "Battle of the Clipper Chip". New York Times Magazine. pp. 44–51, plus cover. Whitfield Diffie's amazing breakthrough could guarantee computer privacy. But the Government, fearing crime and terror, wants to co-opt his magic key and listen in. Now it's crypto-war on the electronic frontier. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

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