The Information Age - The Power of Cryptography & Encryption (With Captions)

http://www.illumingati.co.nz "The development of Cryptography I have been pushing for the past 20 Years, to protect the integrity and privacy of the individuals and the sovereignty of states from domination by these large players" - Julian Assange The exchange of digital information has become an integral part of our society. Already tens of millions of emails are sent each day, the Internet has provided the infrustructure for the digital marketplace, and e-commerce is thriving. Money is flowing through cyberspace, and it as estimated that every day half of the world's gross domestic product travels through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) network. Democrocies that referanda will begin to have online voting, and governments will increasingly use the Internet to help administer their countries, offering facilties such as online tax returns. Without a doubt, the Information Age is under way, and we live in a wired world. Critically, the success of the Information Age depends on the ability to protect the information as it flows around the world, and this relies on the power of cryptography. Encryption can be seen as providing the locks and keys of the information Age. For two thousand years encryption has been importance only to government and the military, but today it also has a role to play in facilitating business, and tomorrow ordinary people will rely on cryptography in order to protect their privacy. Fortunately, just as the Information Age is taking off, access to extraordinary strong encryption. The development of public-key cryptography, particulary the RSA cipher, has given today's cryptographers a clear advantage in their continual power struggle against cryptanalysts. If the value of N is large enough, then finding p and q takes Eve and unreasonable amount of time, and RSA encryption is therefore effectively unbreakable. Most important of all, public-key cryptography is not weakened by any key-distribution problems. In short, RSA guarantees almost unbreakable locks for our most precious pieces of information. However, as with every technology, there is a darkside to encryption. As well as protecting the communications of law-abiding citizens, encryption also protects the communication of criminals and terrorists. Currently, police forces use wiretaping as a way of gathering evidence to counter organized crime and terrorism , but this word be ineffective if criminals used unbreakable ciphers. In the twenty-first century, the fundamental dilema for cryptography is to find a way of allowing the public and businesses to use encryption in order to exploit the benefits of the Information Age, without allowing criminals to abuse encryption and avade arrest. There is currently and active and vigorous debate about the best way forward, and much of the discussion has been inspired by the story of Phil Zimmermann, an American crytographer whose attempts to encourage the widespread use of strong encryption have frightened America's security experts, threatened the billion dollar National Security Agency and made him the subject of a major inquiry and grand-jury investigation.