
The Library
Cryptography and the global South : secrecy, signals and information imperialism
Tools
Dover, Robert and Aldrich, Richard J. (2020) Cryptography and the global South : secrecy, signals and information imperialism. Third World Quarterly, 41 (11). pp. 1900-1917. doi:10.1080/01436597.2020.1793665 ISSN 0143-6597.
|
PDF
WRAP-cryptography-global-South-secrecy-signals-information-imperialism-Aldrich-2020.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (1414Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2020.1793665
Abstract
For decades, espionage during the Cold War was often presented as a competition between East and West. The extent to which the Global South constituted the main battleground for this conflict is now being appreciated, together with the way coups and covert regime change represented a continuation of colonialism by other means. Recent revelations about the nature of technical surveillance and signals intelligence during this period paint an even more alarming picture. New research materials released in Germany show the ways in which Washington, London and even Moscow conspired to systematically attack the secure communications of the Global South. For almost half a century, less advanced countries were persuaded to invest significant sums in encryption machines that were adapted to perform poorly. This was a deceptive system of non-secrecy that opened the sensitive communications of the Global South to an elite group of nations, that included former colonial rulers, and emergent neo-imperial powers. Moreover, the nature of this technical espionage, which involved commercial communications providers, is an early and instructive example of digital global information inequality.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | D History General and Old World > D History (General) | ||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Cold War, World War, 1939-1945 -- Cryptography, World politics -- 1945-1989, Intelligence service -- Historiography | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Third World Quarterly | ||||||||
Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0143-6597 | ||||||||
Official Date: | 2020 | ||||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||||
Volume: | 41 | ||||||||
Number: | 11 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 1900-1917 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1080/01436597.2020.1793665 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Third World Quarterly on 03/08/2020, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01436597.2020.1793665 | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 6 July 2020 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 3 February 2022 | ||||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
|
||||||||
Related URLs: |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
![]() |
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year