The Encryption Pioneer Who Was Written Out of History 238
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."
They have a headstart (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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...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"
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I don't think that the British forgot about the guys in the North - they were too busy fighting the French because of the guys in the North.
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"The pretext of the war is about some land a thousand leagues off. A country cold, desolate and hideous. "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v3kg5 [bbc.co.uk]
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You too? LOL
Re:They have a headstart (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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it is constitutionally impossible for the British government to grant independence to Canada
History [wikipedia.org] begs [wikipedia.org] to [wikipedia.org] differ. [wikipedia.org]
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> 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...
Even Australia [wikipedia.org] is legally separate from Britian, despite the "Queen of Australia" being the same person as the "Queen of England".
Only one step to go before we finish the job...
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Only one step to go before we finish the job...
Oh christ I wish we'd hurry up. Its bloody embarrassing what with our official religion and all the sucking up to ER which goes on.
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Well these are the people who's law is capable of declaring the landholdings of indigenous people to simply not exist. They didn't just ignore the issue or let their hit men clear the place out. They actually had a law to say that the place was empty when it clearly was not.
So clearly it can be hacked to say what they want it to say.
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Go read up on the contorted legal stuff that went on in the EEC treaty of 1974. In short they are not binding.
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It didn't the Canada Act 1982 it gave them "Patriation" which meant that they were totally self governing ....
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And that's why India is still part of the British Empire and why we didn't hand Hong Kong back a few years ago.
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We were less dicks with you precisely because the Americans won, and we realised that being less dickish was more likely to keep the remaining colonies in the Empire.
Although that was a relative thing of course: we carried on being dickish for a lot longer where the colonies were mostly inhabited by brown or black people, sad to admit.
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You self hate all you want - some of us are quite proud of the empire and what it did.
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So there's a lot of history there and a lot of it's really fucked up. You could say something like the British did more good then bad during the heigh
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I don't give a shit. All countries behaved similarly in past times. Why not go check out what the USA's record on native americans and the slave trade.
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The difference would be very few Americans would say they are proud of the injustices against native Americans and participating in the slave trade.
To be "proud" that at one time the British considered themselves superior to their fellow humans that they considered it moral and just to force other nations into colonies and then hold them as colonies via military power is in itself rather sad. Depriving a people of sovreignty is pretty high on the crappy things you can do with world power scale.
Nobody is s
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Yes, the difference you're conveniently ignoring is that the USA itself is a colony, yet they're still proud of it. Ie they're proud of their ancestors genocide against the natives (most of which was NOT approved of by the British even when it was still a british colony) to clear the way for themselves and even today native americans are STILL treated as 2nd class citizens in some places.
"considered it moral and just to force other nations into colonies"
I never said it was moral and it didn't usually requir
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Well, yes. Genocidal maniacs are often proud of the genocides they(*) have committed.
((*) Well, not them, their "ancestors").
People who defend empire, past or present, are scum, or ignorant, or ignorant scum.
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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.
Not just Canadians: Ghandi [wikipedia.org] and his followers gained independence for India through entirely non-violent protest.
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And Australians did it with a vote [wikipedia.org], not a war.
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Different circumstances...
American Colonies: We're becoming our own country!
Britain: Bloody hell, you're not!
[war ensues]
About 125 years later after several other wars and colonies have fled...
Australian Territories: We're becoming our own country!
Britain: Awww, piss off.
Plus, the empire had other pressing things to worry with at the time with Australia, what with the flagging health of their Queen and all.
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And no-one knew our first Prime Minister until the TV ad told us!
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but, hopefully, a non-violent offense.
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that's like admiring the guy who still lives in his parent's basement in his 40s, and keeps going "mum, can i have my own life now?" "no!" "yes queen mum" "go do the garbage!" "yes queen mum"
rather than the guy who at age 15 says "fuck you, you old bitch, you don't tell me what to do!" "you don't talk to your mother like that!" "bitch bitch bitch fuck you i hate you i'm out of here!"
well, now that i put it that way, both canada and the usa suck
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Re:They have a headstart (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:They have a headstart (Score:5, Insightful)
But in this case, it's like they didn't even exist. Closed research doesn't push man forward. Quite the opposite, imo.
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GCHQ ~had Red, Blue and Colorob as post ww2 efforts around 1948-1951 till 1961.
eg. 1951 the UK's Oedipus had high speed storage via drum memory 10000 15 character phrases.
The NSA around this time had Atlas 1 1950, (parallel, drum memory), Atlas 2 1953 (parallel, core memory).
1958 Solo (transistors), 1962 Harvest (fully automated tape library). Harvest influenced ~IBM System 360.
GCHQ was mostly IBM (1960's IBM System 360, 700's) , Honeywell, Cray (1977) and now
Re:They have a headstart (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Couple issues. Unanimous supports is never a requirement for independence otherwise no British colony would ever be independent today.
Your concern over Blacks, poor, and native Americans is misplaced. Those minorities suffered equally under the heel of British colonists then they did under American independents.
The idea that somehow the British empire wanted to keep the 13 colonies in oder to improve the lives of poor, Blacks, and Native Americans is revisionist history at best.
Re:They have a headstart (Score:4, Informative)
The claim that "the British empire wanted to keep the 13 colonies in oder to improve the lives of poor, Blacks, and Native Americans" was never made, so ascribing it to someone else seems just a little ridiculous.
Britain abolished slavery decades before the United States, so clearly there's one group who would have been better off under British rule.
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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
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2. On 11 November 1975, when the
Gone [wikipedia.org].
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"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."
Sure, we have indeed.
It might have been more helpful if we hadn't hidden all these advances under a rock and denied all knowledge of them for 40 or 50 years though eh?
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And most of their real work was done in secret, which means that many inventions may have been preceded by inventions for covert ops.
No wonder that James Bond had all those gadgets.
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That slur is common, but is very out of date. British dentists have persuaded an entire generation to clean their teeth with Fluoride toothpaste. As a result, there is now so little of the old drilling, filling and extracting work to be done that most dentists are desperately trying to get their patients interested in botox injections, getting their teeth bleached to an un-natural #ffffff white and so forth, just t
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> But they were also kind of dicks about that whole independence thing. So it all evens out.
And Americans were then The Terrorists(TM). So I guess, you're right.
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I wouldn't so much say it's a British thing as much as a government thing. The NSA is pretty far ahead of academics with encryption technology too.
"It took the academic community two decades to figure out that the NSA "tweaks" actually improved the security of DES. This means that back in the '70s, the National Security Agency was two decades ahead of the state of the art."
(from http://news.cnet.com/Saluting-the-data-encryption-legacy/2010-1029_3-5381232.html [cnet.com])
Re:They have a headstart (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:5, Funny)
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Cocks used a pubic key
Nice achievement but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
Re:Nice achievement but ... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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That's not logical, nor necessarily true. Just because _you_ don't know about research, doesn't mean it's not being put to use in a way that may benefit you. An awful lot of research at places like GCHQ and the NSA is conducted out of sight of the communities it is intended to protect.
You don't, after all, need to know the research behind a secure government communications channel, but you may well benefit (even unknowingly) from having a government that is less vulnerable to espionage.
At least, that's the
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So, protecting state secrets is of no benefit to society?
No. Its only benefit is to POLITICS.
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I wouldn't be so absolute about that.
I'm sure there was some benefit, just not necessarily in the applicable field. Maybe the British developed better methods for keeping stuff secret.
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It need not be even their decision (eventhough here it is) - you create a product which is useful for the military, and say you try to patent it - for selling it - as per the official secrets act, the govt can take this idea/product and use it - and ask the implementor not to mention to anyone. From then on the guy cannot even publish it.
The govt does not give out proper compensation too. So it is not always voluntary.
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There was no problem prediction the invasion of Kuwait.
Saddam: "Is it OK if I invade Kuwait"?
US Ambassador April Glaspie: "we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait [...] the issue is not associated with America".
Great prank call name (Score:2, Funny)
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Nearly. I think the canonical form for this name would be:
Columbus again (Score:2)
The History repeats, Columbus announce his discover. The US Researchers published their work. But someone was there before.
Who is "The Discoverer"?
You Got Turing'd (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude does groundbreaking work, work gets suppressed by British government for reasons of national security, dude gets screwed.
At least this guy didn't then get force-fed oestrogen by the government until he killed himself, which is something I suppose.
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hey, i didnt't get force-fed estrogen either! thanks, britain!
More like lost in a mix of issues (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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a strong gay navy and Dr Who repeats
Could be worse.
It's all about presentation (Score:3, Funny)
It's a good thing the Official Secrets Act prevented this from being news at the time. I'm not sure reporters could have kept a straight face reporting on the "Cocks Algorithm."
It really wasn't intentional at all (Score:2)
Just that every time the editor for their papers saw the list of names at the top with "C. Cocks" in it they always thought it was a childish prank and erased his name.
To this day every time he gets pulled over the cops say "Come on buddy, your REAL ID this time".
Why should you get recognition... (Score:4, Interesting)
There in Knuth, so not "written out of history" (Score:3, Informative)
Knuth's TAOCP, Volume 2, Third Edition, Page 407:
"Historical note: It was revealed in 1998 that Clifford Cocks had considered encoding messages by the transformation $x^{pq} mod pq$ already in 1973, but his work was kept secret".
And that feels like the correct amount of recognition.
don't give credit where credit is due (Score:2)
it leads to people acting on peer pressure. we try to discourage that sort of thing.
In Simon Singh's 'The Code Book' (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Significant mention in "The Code Book" (Score:3, Insightful)
Hardly written out of history. As I recall he got a whole chapter in "The Code Book" . I would bet that most people familiar with RSA or Diffie Helman have read that.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
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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."
Hey! You can't make fun of the Queen like that!!!
You should have correctly spelt sugar.
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She spells it "Zucker"
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Blame the politicians and civil servants (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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et tu, brutus?
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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.
Having them take pop-idol almost makes up for them getting all the others.
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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
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As a little parting gift, they did away with student grants, so now students leave university with anything up to £100k of debt
What on earth are students doing to get this much debt? Tuition fees are capped at £3,225 a year, with financial aid available for people with families that can't easily afford this much (I only paid about £300/year back when the fees were closer to £1000 as a result of this). You can get a room in a student flat for under £200/month, which works out at £1,800 for the 9 months that you have to be at university. Bills and food come to around £200-300 on top of that, gi
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I got a loan because grants had been severely limited by 1991.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Funny)
The reason Brits dont make Home computers is that they cant figure out how to make them leak oil.
And YES I have owned 3 british cars and to british bikes... I have experienced British engineering first hand.
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LCDs was done by Austrian, French, UK, USA, and Swiss. Basically, different aspects of it were discovered by various ppl.
Exactly HOW was RSA appropriated? UK kept the tech to th
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Gifted to America? I think it was independently developed. But it seems like the Brits developed it independently a little sooner, they should have gotten credit then. Such a waste these government classification things. Holds so much science and technology back. As well as the current patent situation which fosters idea's for money not idea's for idea's and progress. I think our priorities are off with these money centric, government centric ethics.
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It doesn't apply to spys.
Re:Me too! (Score:5, Funny)
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.
In yo' face! (Score:2)
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.
I went back in time and posted before you [slashdot.org], even made sure it was farther upthread than your post.
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Re:Me too! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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My brother invented the internal combustion engine.
He was very sad when I told him it had been done before.
This is a true story.
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The duration of patents here in the USA changed a few years ago too (how it changed I do not remember).
IIRC, it changed from "17 years from date of grant" to "20 years from date of filing" (which then matches most other countries' patent law). Also, (again IIRC), the patent application now automatically becomes published 18 months after filing (assuming, I guess, it isn't withdrawn prior to that). I presume these changes were introduced to stop the "submarining" [wikipedia.org] that occurred in USPTO.
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They can't. But what is a "purely mathematical" algorithm? Can you find one which, for some reason, could never have any useful application whatsoever? The RSA algorithm wasn't patented - it's use in encrypting "messages" was.
This is why the typical programmer argument against software patents, "But it's just math!", is futile and justifiably derided by the typical Patent Attorney. The proper (and extremely powerful) argumen
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Mathematics can not be patented, not even in the US. A computer running a program perfoming mathematic permutations however... suddenly becomes 'a method and device to...' and thus is deemed to be patentable because it is not just mathematics but 'mathematics applied using a device'. The net effect of this is that in the US mathematics is indeed patentable since there is no other sensible way to perform it except for using the device stated in the patent application - a device which happens to have been aro
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Re:They don't deserve recognition (Score:5, Insightful)
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.