Book Review: The Business of Secrets

This review of Fred Kinch’s self-published memoir, The Business of Secrets, recounts the challenges and peculiarities of selling cryptographic hardware in the 1970s, when neither vendors nor customers could reliably assess security and the NSA tightly controlled the field. It explores Datotek’s pivot to link encryption, the era’s insecure designs, export licensing constraints, the clandestine role of Crypto AG’s CIA/BND ownership, and ethically overlooked sales to repressive regimes. The piece frames the book as a revealing snapshot of pre-mainstream commercial cryptography and the opaque landscape before modern academic crypto and broader understanding of cryptanalysis.