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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."
I bet they forgot to tick the "don't let our government gift more of our cool sh!t to America" box at the bottom either. One day you're going to find our Queen left in a cardboard box on the steps of the Whitehouse with a note saying "sorry, we can't afford her any more, please take care of her - one lump of suger in her tea, etc."
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
True, if you hide the research results, then you don't benefit the society and don't deserve the credit. The value is not in ideas themselves, but in their mass availability.
GCHQ was ready to talk of this issue and had all the press like 'kits' ready for a nice PR peek in 1984.
Then came the Peter Writes's Spycatcher book.
Thatcher was destroying any trace of union activity within the GCHQ at the time to, so the PKE release was dropped until 1997.
In the 1970's the NSA and GCHQ did not know what to do with it.
With "no" internet, one idea floated was nuke go codes.
The more interesting issue was the 1985 quadripartite (UK, US, German, French) to keep DES open to the NSA/GCHQ but safe from commercial rivals/hackers.
PKE was fought later with Clipper, key recovery, key escrow.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Former colonies such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand were given full, constitutional independence when they had the infrastructure to support self-governance. American independence was not unanimously supported in the thirteen colonies of the day, however this was suppressed when revolutionaries used their largely French government issued weapons to intimidate, disenfranchise and suppress so called "tories". While no on can claim that America is backward or undeveloped today, the lives of the native Americans, the blacks and the poor all suffered under America's hard line expansionism and slightly regressive social policies during the early nineteenth century. While American political philosophy has evolved to justify that the winners of that war were unquestionably right, as all victors claim to be, it was a complex issue in its day and remains so.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Intriguingly (I think atleast), it is constitutionally impossible for the British government to grant independence to Canada, because it's not possible for one government to do something irreversible that the the next government can't undo. So, technically, the UK must still regard Canada as a colony...
what about Calculus. Leibnitz and Newton within months of each other. Newton came up with it first, but didn't publish, then Leibnitz published, and Newton got annoyed, published, claimed he was first and there was a big kerfuffle.
In the end we actually use Leibnitz notation for calculus, even though most people don't know who he was, and think Newton invented it.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Most of them are arts graduates with about as much scientific and technical knowledge as a comatose slug. Nothing has changed. They wouldn't know technical innovation if it kicked them in the balls. While this country his still run by people who think quoting shakespeare parrot fashion is the last word in intellect then we stand no chance.
No, we're not contented with it. The trouble is, we've had 30 years of right-wing government since 1979, which has emphasised the financial sector above all else. The Thatcher government shut down the shipyards, the steel mills that supplied the shipyards, and the coal pits that supplied the steel mills. Then, if that wasn't enough, the Conservatives sold off the railways and the post office. Now we have expensive crap trains, an expensive crap postal service, and expensive crap telephone system. Then John Major's government managed to screw the economy until the Stock Market collapsed in 1992. As a little parting gift, they did away with student grants, so now students leave university with anything up to £100k of debt.
This paved the way for the Labour government, who decided that if you can't beat 'em you should join 'em. They set about selling off any publically-owned service that was left, pocketed the cash that they didn't spunk on things like the London Eye and Millenium Dome. Once again, though, right-wing politics lead to the inevitable economic collapse as they encouraged people to pay crazy prices for houses, with mortgages that no-one in their right mind would consider.
We're now in a position where the Conservative-Liberal coalition is slightly left of where "New Labour" (now *that* sounds Orwellian, does it not?) started in 1997. It doesn't look like they're going to do anything to stem the rising tide of anti-intellectualism. We're stuffed, basically. Maybe seeking asylum in Somalia would work out better, I just don't know.
You need to distinguish between actual reality, the legal reality in Canada, India etc., and the legal reality in the UK.
For example, in actual reality, India is obviously an independent country. In Indian legal reality, India is an independent country as well: it is independent as far as Indian law is concerned. However, whether British law considers India to be truly independent is another matter; I don't know the answer, but there is no a priori reason why it would have to match e.g. Indian legal reality.
Consider the Anglo-Irish treaty you brought up. The very Wikipedia page you link to says that "it established the Irish Free State as a self-governing dominion within the British Empire" - note the wording. As far as British legal reality is concerned, Ireland is (apparently) still part of the British Empire, and thus not truly independent.
Of course, the GP is wrong, too: while it is impossible for the British parliament to *grant* independence to Canada, it is certainly not impossible for them to *recognize* the independence of Canada. Parliament cannot legally restrict what successive parliaments can do, but it does not have to close its eyes and refuse to accept actual reality, even if that actual reality is the independence of what was formerly a part of the British Empire. It merely cannot *create* this independence through its own actions.
Indeed, the new coalition coming to power might have wished they could undo some of the events set in place by the previous government, getting into a costly war nobody wanted and making us a massive terrorist target into the bargain, for instance. I don't see how giving a country independence would be any different - if the new government wanted to undo that change they'd have to re-conquer said country, not easy but still not exactly binding or impossible.
Why should anyone get recognition if they keep their discovery a secret?
One of the really interesting things about the American revolution is that some of the wealthiest men
in America put their fortunes on the line for their principles. Some of these wealthy men, like Haym Solomon, died peniless
because they had lent so much money to the revolution and never asked for repayment.
The reasons for ending the war also include the desire for US-British trade to resume. There
was lots of moneyed interests on both the british and the american side.
Actually no, the reason that the UK gave Canada it's independence is because it didn't want to be embroiled in yet another conflict with the United States. The US tried to invade Canada twice, during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 and even though they got their asses kicked both times, so it was obvious that they wanted it. And in 1867 they finally had an excuse to take it again, the US was fresh out of the civil war and the Union government was very pissed at the UK for giving large amounts of military aid to the Confederates(the UK really wanted the cheap agricultural and mineral products that the south had been providing them with). So the Brits felt that they had essentially 2 options: Get involved in another battle in North America which at the time they really couldn't afford or let Canada go and if the US invades Canada it's no longer a British problem. They chose the latter and the rest is history.
Monstar L
Much of Cocks' work is documented in Simon Singh's fantastic treatise on cryptography and stenography through history, 'The Code Book'. This includes thoughts by Cocks' and James Ellis on the secrecy of their work, and their comfort at that -- they knew what they were getting into. Especially telling are Ellis' quotes -- as he died ~1 month before the public announcement was made...
By post-war, I assume you mean the American "War for Independence," or perhaps the American "War of 1812." I think the failed innovations start at least as early as Babbage's Difference Engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine
Had Britain kept the colonies that became the United States, and thus had the Southern, slave-driven plantation economy as a key part of its economy, it might well not have abolished slavery as early as it did. And, even had it tried to, local resistance to the idea would probably have resulted in a war much like the Civil War -- which colonies that, in our reality, didn't become slave states might have supported if it wasn't perceived as much as a slavery vs. anti-slavery issue as a Britain dictating to the colonies issue. Making, in effect, the American Revolution later, and, if it was successful, the institution of slavery more durable.