[Cryptography] Radia's note

[Dave Farber]

In the late 1970’s, at the University of Delaware on a DEC PDP 10 (I think) , Marshall Rose, Steve Walker and I created a encryption based email system that was completely transparent to the users in that if a person you were emailing to had established a key (my memory is hazy on how that was done) then all email to and from that person was encrypted without any work on the part of the user. It also handled lists of addresses etc. Maybe if Marshall is on this list he can add to the description. Steve and I tried to get Version to adopt the system but got no where!!!. 

I hope most of you remember Steve Walker, he was at NSA and was a ket person in establishing their  computer security center and went on to establish Truster Information Systems and testified before the hill on export control  issues and helped point out that the USA was not the only place that encryption technology existed :-)in a dramatic testimony.

Again its a long time ago and I may have some details wrong but the system worked as advertised and NO ONE was interested in commercializing it.

Dave