Slashdot Mirror
The Encryption Pioneer Who Was Written Out of History
nk497 writes "Clifford Cocks is one of three British men who developed an encryption system while working for the UK government in the early 1970s, but was forced to keep the innovation quiet for national security reasons. Just a few years later, their Public Encryption Key was developed separately by US researchers at Stanford and MIT, and eventually evolved into the RSA encryption algorithm, which now secures billions of transactions on the internet every day. 'The first I knew about [the US discovery] was when I read about it in Scientific American. I opened it one lunchtime and saw a description and thought, "Ah, that's what we did,"' he said. 'You don't go into the business to get external credit and recognition — quite the opposite. Quite honestly, the main reaction was one of complete surprise that this had actually been discovered outside.' The UK trio have now won recognition for their accomplishment in the form of the Milestone Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers."
It's really not a milestone for anything if nobody can build on your results. It's certainly a great achievement to come up with an approach like that. However it contributes nothing to science if you don't publish it - the contribution was made by others. They weren't written out of history - they opted out.
...But they were also kind of dicks about that whole independence thing. So it all evens out.
You know, Americans say that about the Brits, but look to your neighbour to the North.
Rather than going through a bloody and violent war for independence, we just kinda sat around for a while. Eventually, the Brits forgot about us, we did our own thing, and we got some independence, we waited around some more, signed some papers, then got some more independence. No dickery at all. All I can really say about the accusations of one side being a dick is, "pot, meet kettle"
-I only code in BASIC.-
But they were also kind of dicks about that whole independence thing. So it all evens out.
Dicks? Well, I guess that explains why a Mr. Cocks invented pubic encryption, something used by nerds ever since.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
But in this case, it's like they didn't even exist. Closed research doesn't push man forward. Quite the opposite, imo.
Maybe you don't care, but he would obviously have been bound by the Official Secrets Act. Publishing his findings "so that humanity could benefit" would therefore have had some very real, negative consequences for him. The best case, I imagine, would have been losing his job. At worst, a couple of years at Her Majesty's pleasure. When was the last time you risked prison time by sharing your employer's secrets?
Well yes, Parliament cannot bind its successors, but that could apply just as well to recognising *US* independence.
What might be the theoretical legal situation isn't always compatible with the real world situation. Sensible people defer to the real world.
The development was made at the height of the Cold War. I imagine the secrecy had more to do with not handing a hugely robust encryption method over to perceived enemies at the height of a conflict fought through military intelligence, and that the decision was not made simply to annoy you personally.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The history of post-War British technology has been a long succession of failed innovations which shortly afterwards have been appropriated and successfully marketed by American companies: Jet airliners, liquid crystal displays, public key encryption, home computers, the Web, and Pop Idol. Whichever British scientists don't end up emigrating to the US outright usually end up working for the US economy anyway.
Sadly, as a nation, the British seem not only contented with this state of affairs, but actually quite proud of their "special relationship". I blame the BBC for buying too many syndicated shows.
May the Maths Be with you!