Tuesday 6 July 2004

Now I Just Need a Tinfoil Hat

I think I finally have a fair grasp on this whole encryption thing. The last days I've been reading "The Hacker Ethic" by Pekka Himanen and it certinaly is an interesting follow-up to having just finished Cryptonomicon (which was fabulously entertaining to the end, by the way). I can't help but think of the Secret Admirers dressed in trench coats armed with assult rifles. The right to bear arms and the right to strong encryption seem like two ingredients of the same dish: Individuals protecting themselves against the corruption of governments... or any large organization.

I think the most striking part of Cryptonomicon was Randy Waterhouse's time in the Philipino prison on a trumped up drug charge doing everything beyond imagination to befuddle the Van Eck Phreaking. (It is a shame that a keylogger is much easier for an attacker to manage.) I thought that level of paranoia really illustrated what I thought to be the difference between psychoses and perseptiveness.

Anyhow, that's enough here. I'm going to spam my thinkin 'n' stuff on the Nibble's lug (http://lug.nibble.bz).

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