How Two Men Unlocked Modern Encryption

This book is highly recommended if you want to know more about encryption, but are afraid of the mathemathical concepts. It starts of super easy with a simple caesar shift (the kind of secret code children use) and builds from there. I'm a total math noob but thanks to this book I wrote a simple public-key encryption service. The book contains tons of examples and even challenges, if you're up to it.

If you haven't read this book, go on and do so!

If major innovations are being done behind closed doors, then we're doing something wrong. Why should we reward these organizations that poach the best and the brightest and drain tax dollars that could be used for more constructive things? There's something almost perverse about the research arms of intelligence services. Its the opposite of the idea of open academic paper publishing and if they continue to snap up all the best talent, of course the academic world won't be able to keep up. Imagine if the government had a secret soccer team that would draft the top three players every year. How competitive would the civilian team be? What, if any, credit should we give the government team?

Maybe some disincentives like these would make some people think twice about getting in bed with the NSA or the GCHQ. Sure, you'll make some real money, maybe work on some interesting problems, but if you do something amazing your name won't be known.