When the 50th anniversary of the birth of Information Theory was celebrated at the 1998 IEEE International Symposium on Informa tion Theory in Boston, there was a great deal of reflection on the the year 1993 as a critical year. As the years pass and more perspec tive is gained, it is a fairly safe bet that we will view 1993 as the year when the "early years" of error control coding came to an end. This was the year in which Berrou, Glavieux and Thitimajshima pre sented "Near Shannon Limit Error-Correcting Coding and Decoding: Turbo Codes" at the International Conference on Communications in Geneva. In their presentation, Berrou et al. claimed that a combi nation of parallel concatenation and iterative decoding can provide reliable communications at a signal to noise ratio that is within a few tenths of a dB of the Shannon limit. Nearly fifty years of striving to achieve the promise of Shannon's noisy channel coding theorem had come to an end. The implications of this result were immediately apparent to all -coding gains on the order of 10 dB could be used to dramatically extend the range of communication receivers, increase data rates and services, or substantially reduce transmitter power levels. The 1993 ICC paper set in motion several research efforts that have permanently changed the way we look at error control coding."

Fundamentals of Codes, Graphs, and Iterative Decoding is an explanation of how to introduce local connectivity, and how to exploit simple structural descriptions. Chapter 1 provides an overview of Shannon theory and the basic tools of complexity theory, communication theory, and bounds on code construction. Chapters 2 - 4 provide an overview of "classical" error control coding, with an introduction to abstract algebra, and block and convolutional codes. Chapters 5 - 9 then proceed to systematically develop the key research results of the 1990s and early 2000s with an introduction to graph theory, followed by chapters on algorithms on graphs, turbo error control, low density parity check codes, and low density generator codes.

Cellular technology has always been a surveillance technology, but "cellular convergence" - the growing trend for all forms of communication to consolidate onto the cellular handset - has dramatically increased the impact of that surveillance. In Cellular Convergence and the Death of Privacy, Stephen Wicker explores this unprecedented threat to privacy from three distinct but overlapping perspectives: the technical, the legal, and the social. Professor Wicker first describes cellular technology and cellular surveillance using language accessible to non-specialists. He then examines current legislation and Supreme Court jurisprudence that form the framework for discussions about rights in the context of cellular surveillance. Lastly, he addresses the social impact of surveillance on individual users. The story he tells is one of a technology that is changing the face of politics and economics, but in ways that remain highly uncertain.

Fundamentals of Codes, Graphs, and Iterative Decoding is an explanation of how to introduce local connectivity, and how to exploit simple structural descriptions. Chapter 1 provides an overview of Shannon theory and the basic tools of complexity theory, communication theory, and bounds on code construction. Chapters 2 - 4 provide an overview of "classical" error control coding, with an introduction to abstract algebra, and block and convolutional codes. Chapters 5 - 9 then proceed to systematically develop the key research results of the 1990s and early 2000s with an introduction to graph theory, followed by chapters on algorithms on graphs, turbo error control, low density parity check codes, and low density generator codes.

When the 50th anniversary of the birth of Information Theory was celebrated at the 1998 IEEE International Symposium on Informa tion Theory in Boston, there was a great deal of reflection on the the year 1993 as a critical year. As the years pass and more perspec tive is gained, it is a fairly safe bet that we will view 1993 as the year when the "early years" of error control coding came to an end. This was the year in which Berrou, Glavieux and Thitimajshima pre sented "Near Shannon Limit Error-Correcting Coding and Decoding: Turbo Codes" at the International Conference on Communications in Geneva. In their presentation, Berrou et al. claimed that a combi nation of parallel concatenation and iterative decoding can provide reliable communications at a signal to noise ratio that is within a few tenths of a dB of the Shannon limit. Nearly fifty years of striving to achieve the promise of Shannon's noisy channel coding theorem had come to an end. The implications of this result were immediately apparent to all -coding gains on the order of 10 dB could be used to dramatically extend the range of communication receivers, increase data rates and services, or substantially reduce transmitter power levels. The 1993 ICC paper set in motion several research efforts that have permanently changed the way we look at error control coding."

This volume comprises a collection of papers presented at the Workshop on Information Protection, held in Moscow, Russia in December 1993. The 16 thoroughly refereed papers by internationally known scientists selected for this volume offer an exciting perspective on error control coding, cryptology, and speech compression. In the former Soviet Union, research related to information protection was often shielded from the international scientific community. Therefore, the results presented by Russian researchers and engineers at this first international workshop on this topic are of particular interest; their work defines the cutting edge of research in many areas of error control, cryptology, and speech recognition.