Oral history interview with Susan Landau

Abstract

This oral history interview is sponsored by NSF 2202484 “Mining a Useable Past: Perspectives, Paradoxes, and Possibilities with Security and Privacy,” at the Charles Babbage Institute. Professor Susan Landau begins with her experience at Bronx Science High School, and its strong influence on her. She then moves on to her undergraduate days at Princeton. She relates how she shifted from Math to Computer Science during her graduate studies at Cornell and then went on to MIT to earn her Ph.D. in Theoretical Computer Science. Landau comments on the gendered environments and sexism at these schools. It is a theme in her later discussing her motivation for founding the ResearcHers email list.

Landau became an Assistant Professor of Computer Science within the Math Department at Wesleyan. She discusses the evolution of her research during her early years as an academic—this includes the Landau’s Algorithm for “de-nesting” radicals. Landau provides context for her thought about mathematical applications to cryptography, the state of art of privacy with regard to cryptography in the mid-1970s, the book Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption co-authored with Whitfield Diffie, and her book People Count.

Landau then turns to her years at Sun Microsystems in the 1990s, including the establishment of the principles for Digital Rights Management and DRM Project DReaM. Landau discusses her transition to Radcliffe Institute, Google, Worcester Polytech, and finally, her long tenure and current home at Tufts University. This includes her elaborating on founding a Master’s Program in Cybersecurity and Public Policy there. She highlights recollections of her encounter with famed physicist Joseph Rotblat and his influence on her life. She also relates her longtime collaboration with Steve Bellovin and Matt Blaze at the intersection of tech, security and privacy, policy, and law. She contextualizes her testimony before Congress with the Apple 2015, 2016 (Encryption Dispute—should Apple be forced to unlock its encryption to authorities/FBI) case. And she also comments on a variety of issues including state-sponsored hacking capabilities, the great importance of communicating with broader audiences, and her style and approach in mentoring graduate students.