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."

Comments

They have a headstart

[BadAnalogyGuy]

The Brits are pretty amazing. It's like they are a step ahead of everyone in this field. I imagine not brushing your teeth gives you a few minutes extra every day, and that adds up.

I'm kidding of course. But the British, maybe because of brains, maybe because of necessity, have been pushing the boundaries of computation for almost two hundred years. We owe a great debt of gratitude towards them.

But they were also kind of dicks about that whole independence thing. So it all evens out.

Re:They have a headstart

[Anonymous Coward]

We owe a great debt of gratitude towards them.

But in this case, it's like they didn't even exist. Closed research doesn't push man forward. Quite the opposite, imo.

Re:They have a headstart

[donscarletti]

But they were also kind of dicks about that whole independence thing. So it all evens out.

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.

Re:They have a headstart

[jareth-0205]

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...

Re:They have a headstart

[rpjs]

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.

Re:They have a headstart

[voss]

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.

Maybe he should have...

[Allnighte]

Maybe he should have protected his work. Perhaps with some kind of ... encryption?

Re:Well...

[Goffee71]

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."

Nice achievement but ...

[Asic Eng]

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.

Re:Nice achievement but ...

[Sockatume]

That seems to be exactly Cocks' stance, that it's an occupational hazard of doing secret work that other people will independently invent the same thing and you can't claim credit.

More like lost in a mix of issues

[AHuxley]

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.

Re:Me too!

[jamesh]

This story is an amazing coincidence. I discovered relativity before Einstein, but I never published my findings. Do you agree recognition is long overdue?

I stole Einstein's research, applied it to building a time machine, then went back in time and discovered it before him. I _still_ didn't get recognition and worse still, his research now claims that time travel is impossible so I can't try it again.

Re:They don't deserve recognition

[Sockatume]

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.