Re Amazing story: The man who invented network traffic analysis, the forgotten genius of Bletchley Park

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: John Gilmore <gnu () toad com>
> Date: January 5, 2018 at 6:51:49 AM EST
> To: farber () gmail com, gnu () toad com
> Cc: "ip" <ip () listbox com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Amazing story: The man who invented network traffic analysis, the forgotten genius of Bletchley Park
>
> If you're interested in Gordon Welchman's story, I also recommend
> reading about the end of it:
>
>  The Sigint Secrets: The Signals Intelligence War, 1900 to Today--Including the Persecution of Gordon Welchman
>  by Nigel West, 1986.  ISBN 0-688-07652-1.
>
> (Cheap used or new copies are readily available.)
>
> Basically, this hugely significant war hero was hounded out of
> classified work and to his early death -- by NSA.  Thanks, idiots!
> Why do security bureacracies always do this to intelligent, dedicated,
> completely loyal people like Welchman, Turing, and Friedman?
>
> Welchman was never told what his alleged crime was.  Nigel West claims
> that 
>
>  Until his intervention, GCHQ and NSA had perpetuated the myth that
>  code breaking had won the war and the Enigma machine had been
>  solved.  Very few knew this to be a distortion of what had really
>  happened.  In consequence public attention had focused on
>  crytpgraphy and had been diverted away from the more sensitive
>  matter of traffic analysis.
>
> Welchman had been working on US tactical and strategic communications
> at MITRE for more then a decade.  He wanted the US public and military
> to understand that no matter how secure your cipher is, your mistakes
> and procedures can make your messages traffic totally insecure.  He
> spent much of his life building American defense encryption systems
> that were designed to NOT be breakable by using the same techniques
> that he had used on Enigma.  But that always requires *understanding*
> on the part of the people operating the system.
>
> The book ends with verbatim copies of the hateful correspondence
> from NSA to Welchman, and his puzzled replies, such as the one
> ending:
>
>  "As far as I can make out this threat comes from NSA, which is
>  somewhat ironical because I have been trying very hard to convince
>  all concerned that cooperation with NSA experts is badly needed
>  at all stages of military research and development programs."
>
>    John



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