Well Educated Lawyer seeks understanding of cryptography
In a casual conversation with a very smart lawyer in my office he mentioned that he refused to use credit cards for transactions over the Internet. I thought he was joking, but he wasn't. He told me that he was very concerned that the information would be captured and put to ill-use by hackers. I explained to him that a protocol called SSL had been developed and even explained how encryption works (I also offered to loan him Steven Levy's book "Crypto" which tells the story of how cryptography was developed for use by private individuals). He remained skeptical.
This is a guy that has a high IQ, did exceptionally well in law school, and worked at a large New York lawfirm. He is the sort of person who doesn't watch TV, but reads scholarly tomes for pleasure. Yet, he has a sort of "boogie man" concept of the internet. He may be an exception, but it is an interesting phenomenon nevertheless. I guess he is the embodiement of Arthur C. Clark's statement that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
1:46:17 PM 
|
