Score:8

Where did Whitfield Diffie say "If you can make random numbers, you can have a private conversation"?

cn flag

I've seen the following (alleged) quotation on this site and other places:-

If you can make random numbers, you can have a private conversation.

-Whitfield Diffie.

Yet we (Google & me) can't find an original source for it. Can anyone point me to the original publication/talk/presentation? Or is it just folklore?

Score:3
cn flag

That quote is an offhand comment that Whitfield Diffie made during a lecture that was, and perhaps still is, on YouTube. It is accurate.

A similar quote can be found in the YouTube video entitled "Stanford Seminar- Cryptography and Security: The View from 2016". It begins around 29:30.

Whitfield Diffie said:

"If you can manufacture good keys, you can have secure cryptography. You might have to manufacture a lot of key, what's called one-time material... it is logically possible to have secure cryptography if you can make secure keys..."

Paul Uszak avatar
cn flag
You're right - the summary statement reads a lot better than the one from 2016.
mangohost

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Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.