Andrew Hodges: The Alan Turing: Enigma (1983/2012)

The full story behind the persecuted genius of wartime codebreaking and the computer revolution.

A new edition to celebrate Alan Turing’s centenary, includes a new foreword by the author and a preface by Douglas Hofstadter.

Alan Turing was the extraordinary Cambridge mathematician who masterminded the cracking of the German Enigma ciphers and transformed the Second World War. But his vision went far beyond this crucial achievement. Before the war he had formulated the concept of the universal machine, and in 1945 he turned this into the first design for a digital computer.

Turing’s far-sighted plans for the digital era forged ahead into a vision for Artificial Intelligence. However, in 1952 his homosexuality rendered him a criminal and he was subjected to humiliating treatment. In 1954, aged 41, Alan Turing committed suicide and one of Britain’s greatest scientific minds was lost.

First published in 1983, Burnett Books
Centenary edition
With Foreword by Douglas Hofstadter
Publisher Vintage, Random House, 2012
ISBN 1448137810, 9781448137817
624 pages

notes by the author
publisher
google books

PDF (MOBI)

Julian Assange, et al.: Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet (2012)

Cypherpunks are activists who advocate the widespread use of strong cryptography (writing in code) as a route to progressive change. Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of and visionary behind WikiLeaks, has been a leading voice in the cypherpunk movement since its inception in the 1980s.

Now, in what is sure to be a wave-making new book, Assange brings together a small group of cutting-edge thinkers and activists from the front line of the battle for cyber-space to discuss whether electronic communications will emancipate or enslave us. Among the topics addressed are: Do Facebook and Google constitute “the greatest surveillance machine that ever existed,” perpetually tracking our location, our contacts and our lives? Far from being victims of that surveillance, are most of us willing collaborators? Are there legitimate forms of surveillance, for instance in relation to the “Four Horsemen of the Infopocalypse” (money laundering, drugs, terrorism and pornography)? And do we have the ability, through conscious action and technological savvy, to resist this tide and secure a world where freedom is something which the Internet helps bring about?

The harassment of WikiLeaks and other Internet activists, together with attempts to introduce anti-file sharing legislation such as SOPA and ACTA, indicate that the politics of the Internet have reached a crossroads. In one direction lies a future that guarantees, in the watchwords of the cypherpunks, “privacy for the weak and transparency for the powerful”; in the other lies an Internet that allows government and large corporations to discover ever more about internet users while hiding their own activities. Assange and his co-discussants unpick the complex issues surrounding this crucial choice with clarity and engaging enthusiasm.

With Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Müller-Maguhn, and Jérémie Zimmermann
Publisher OR Books, New York/London, November 2012
ISBN 9781939293008
192 pages

Interview with Assange where he also speaks about the book (video, DemocracyNow!, 29 November 2012)
Commentary (The Guardian)
Review (Cryptome.org)

Publisher

PDF (PDF)
PDF (EPUB)
PDF (MOBI)
PDF (torrent, all 3 formats)
Video of Assange’s TV show The World Tomorrow interview the book is based on, Part 1, Part 2 (Youtube.com)

The CryptoParty Handbook (2012)

This handbook is designed to help those with no prior experience to protect their basic human right to Privacy in networked, digital domains. By covering a broad array of topics and use contexts it is written to help anyone wishing to understand and then quickly mitigate many kinds of vulnerability using free, open-source tools. Most importantly however this handbook is intended as a reference for use during Crypto Parties.

Facilitated by Adam Hyde
Core Team: Marta Peirano, Asher Wolf, Julian Oliver, Danja Vasiliev, Malte Dik, Brendan Howell, Jan Gerber, Brian Newbold,
Assisted by Teresa Dillon, AT, Carola Hesse, Chris Pinchen, ‘LiamO’, ‘l3lackEyedAngels’, ‘Story89’, Travis Tueffel
Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 Unported license
386+ pages
via Julian Oliver

discussion and criticism (Liberationtech list)

authors and more information

Download the latest edition
Contribute (via GitHub)
Contribute (via Booki)