Twenty years of cryptography in the open literature

The paper concentrates on the real world problems created in the last two decades (1973-99) by cryptographers who publish in the open literature, and also mentions what gave rise to these problems-the solutions we gave to various theoretical problems, often of our own posing. For the last twenty years (1980-99), the annual IEEE Symposia on Security and Privacy have provided us with a stimulating and encouraging environment within which to expand cryptography's structure and visibility, while exposing us to criticism from workers in other security-related areas. Cryptography has been an important component of S&P, but seldom a major one. Much work presented is from conferences other than S&P. But S&P's influence has been ubiquitous and formative for the worldwide community of open literature cryptographers. To set the problems stage, the author presents six propositions for consideration, not necessarily for acceptance.