Review of "Behind the Enigma" by John Ferris

At over 700 pages of main text, this is a bloated, verbose, and repetitive tome.  That Ferris is a historian, and not a cryptologist, is readily apparent.  That the British broke the German Enigma (encryption machine), and therefore were able to read German military traffic during the second world war, is noted, but not how.  Ferris seems to have been told about cribbing, and strip piecing, and the size of four digit, and five digit, code books, but how any of these actually work seems to be a complete mystery to him, and therefore is not really covered at all.  That cryptanalysis relies partly on brain power, and partly on brute force, seems to be about as far as Ferris has got in his analysis of cryptology.

GCHQ does get credited with the invention of asymmetric encryption, and there is even a brief discussion of the fact that such inventions, by such an agency, could not result in scientific publication, at least not immediately.  However, the discussion of this incredibly vital cryptographic concept occupies no more than three pages in the book, and, once again, demonstrates that Ferris does not understand cryptology, or the uses to which asymmetric encryption can be put.  Indeed, he says that it wasn't utilized until the invention of the World Wide Web, and, of course, while most electronic commerce takes place on the Web, and the Internet uses asymmetric encryption in a whole variety of ways underpinning all kinds of activities, even hybrid encryption was invented, by Zimmerman, before the invention of the Web.

Ferris is a historian, and therefore spends much time on politics and documentation, both internal and geopolitical.  He covers the same topics again, and again, and again, and again.  If we are told once that UKUSA (the forerunner of the "Five Eyes" arrangement) is an agreement rather than a treaty, we are told it, in pretty much identical wording, at least a hundred times.  The material is turgid, verbose, heavy on quotations from memos and memoirs, and distinctly light on analysis.  We are frequently told that GCHQ is better than NSA.  We are even sometimes given metrics to this effect.  Unfortunately, the metrics that we are given are not necessarily relevant to any definition of "better."

Cryptology is not the only aspect of GCHQ.  However, Ferris does not do a good job of defining Comint, Sigint, or "Y," or traffic analysis.  He does not do a good job of describing what they are, what information they can give you, and what information they cannot give you.  He also does not do a good job of defining the differences between them, although the book makes many many statements that relate to the importance of differences between them.

Part of the issue of repetition and verbosity in the book does seem to stem from a design decision, where, in opposition to the implications of the title of "Behind the Enigma," the Enigma plays only a very minor role, and doesn't really get explained at all, in the early chapters of the book.  The vast bulk of the material takes place after the Enigma had become irrelevant and obsolete.  And, in fact, the bulk of the text of the book takes place in examining different topics which all take place in the fifty years following the ending of the Second World War.  That all of these chapters cover exactly the same time frame does not make it easy to figure out, as one reads the book, which areas or issues are or were important.  Undoubtedly this book may serve as a guide for future historians who have access to the archives of GCHQ, and wish to have a bit of a starting point in exploring certain topics.  But for the reader who doesn't fall into that category, this book has little to recommend it, and says so in an awful lot of words.