The Spring 2011 Issue features weak crypto. It is defined as encryption and decryption that can be broken by the NSA but which cannot be broken by your little sister or script kiddies. Honest people will find it useful to use weak crypto so that they have a moderate barrier to intruders. There is another advantage: weak crypto allows the NSA and judicial court investigators to read the messages of honest people so that they do not become serious suspects. When a person announces that a weak algorithm is used, the investigators are appeased and they go away more quickly than if strong crypto is evident. Weak crypto includes strong ciphers with key recovery mechanisms built in, as is so common in the USA. There is a law protecting weak crypto called the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, aka DMCA. That makes it a crime for intelligent researchers to understand the feeble techniques that put up low barriers. That law encourages companies to mount a token resistance to talented observers and tinkerers, taunting them with low-hanging fruit.
Some plaintext that is weakly decrypted by investigators might look innocuous.
Sensationalistic hyperbole might be revealed. Reluctant recalcitrants
recursively reschew eschewed echelons. Recumbant ruminants
repludicate remembrances relentfully, rarely remembering
every enunciation. Solipsism sometimes isolates
insulars on forgotten islands as
glory hounds.
Time is money.
Knowledge is power.
Energy is power multiplied by time.
Time is as imaginary as the square root of minus one.
Money is the energy of imagination divided among the knowledgeable.
Stated mathematically, this becomes:
t = $
k = P
E = Pt
t = t(i)
E(i) = P$
E(i) = $k
$ = E(i)/k
References
t = $ Benjamin Franklin
k = P Sir Francis Bacon
E = Pt James Watt
t = t(i) Hermann Minkowski
E(i) = P$
E(i) = $k
$ = E(i)/k Alan Folmsbee
