How did governments lose control of encryption?
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Everybody knows nifty secret codes are the gateway hobby to harder technologies like assembling electronic clocks.
Since when does this ever happen.
Now ask yourself is Mrs. Clarkson is gonna bother talking about anything relevant in math.
My colloquial use of "little johnny and suzie creamcheese" was meant to evoke the 1950's and dated ideas about education. But in the 30% time teachers actually get to use to educate they do still try to bring in outside materials. Emphatically! NOT controversial materials.
How did governments lose control of mathematics?
Yes, it sounds absurd, doesn't it? The BBC have an opportunity, some would say an obligation, to educate here.
The FBI long ago adapted to breaking open general purpose computers that were encrypted by i.e. keeping them awake and logged in through arrest and seizure. PGP won't do you any good there.
Apple finally built the walls around the garden high enough (by doing security at the hardware level) that they put up a fight even when the device is on and ready to use.
edit:
On the subject of trying to keep powerful and/or dangerous knowledge locked away from the general public, one of my older HN comments[1] was about the larger, long-term problem our species' rapid access to new knowledge and powerful technology.
We need to figure out how to safely integrate new technologies into society asap.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism : "More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were sent to prison or fired or executed as a part of this campaign instigated by Lysenko to suppress his scientific opponents."
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Sov... : "Law of large numbers or the idea of random deviation were decreed as "false theories". Statistical journals and university departments were closed; world-renowned statisticians like Andrey Kolmogorov or Eugen Slutsky abandoned statistical research."
This is pretty damn close though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
That distinction is important - physical things like people or papers or computers can be controlled and hidden. It's much harder to keep knowledge itself bottled up, because there is always a risk that someone clever will discover it on their own.
Although there is much talk of BBC left wing bias, it is massively pro government - and more so in recent years.
http://rightdishonourable.com/2015/10/peter-capaldi-the-bbc-...
That is an outright lie and the mere fact that this was published as truth shows the BBC is just a propoganda arm of the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copiale_cipher
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/science/25code.html?_r=0
Hell, we are only just now breaking encryption from the 18th century, ffs.
https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/vpns/history-e...
> 1500 BC ancient Assyrian merchants used intaglio, a piece of flat stone carved into a collage of images and some writing to identify themselves in trading transactions. Using this mechanism, they are producing what today we know as 'digital signature.' The public knew that a particular 'signature' belonged to this trader, but only he had the intaglio to produce that signature. Using this mechanism, they are producing what today we know as 'digital signature.' The public knew that a particular 'signature' belonged to this trader, but only he had the intaglio to produce that signature.
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> So what they said is right, if you specifically know they're talking about public key cryptography and know the history of it. It could have been better written.
> Secondly they're trying to dumb down the history of public key cryptography, and what they mean by "once controlled by the state" is that James H. Ellis & Clifford Cocks discovered and implemented it in secret for the GCHQ in 1970-73. With Malcolm J. Williamson implementing the Diffie–Hellman key exchange in 1974.
William Stanley Jevons basically foreshadowed its existence in the 1800s. There was no way it could be controlled once computers became common.
The fact the GCHQ couldn't keep it secret for even 10 years pretty much shows that.
They never had control except for the briefest of windows and pretending that was really control of cryptography in any substantial way is crazy.
First off there's absolutely no propaganda benefit in that supposed lie.
Secondly they're trying to dumb down the history of public key cryptography, and what they mean by "once controlled by the state" is that James H. Ellis & Clifford Cocks discovered and implemented it in secret for the GCHQ in 1970-73. With Malcolm J. Williamson implementing the Diffie–Hellman key exchange in 1974.
In 1976 Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman released Diffie–Hellman key exchange to the non-classified world.
So what they said is right, if you specifically know they're talking about public key cryptography and know the history of it. It could have been better written.