Keys.
My mind was blown at about 1:30 this afternoon when I realized that key distribution is unnecessary for decryption. In seminar, my professor alluded to this kind of thing as 'the onset of paranoia;' as in, "From this moment forth, nothing was the same." It kind of turns the whole theoretical lack/mirror/recognition/for-itself thing on its ear, doesn't it? I mean, I think there may very well be a moment in everyone's life, or possibly several moments, that marks the onset: the realization that there may or may not be a THEY to look the hell out for.
Here, let's try a little thought experiment, courtesy of Simon Singh. I call you up and say "red;" for those of you who harp on particulars, let's say it's Pantone Red 032. You take a cup of Red 032, and mix in a cup of some secret color of your own--let's say cornflower blue. Meanwhile, I have mixed in a cup of my own secret color: lemon yellow. Now we mail each other these samples.
Okay, even if someone wire-tapped our little "Red 032" conversation, and even if our mailed samples are intercepted and photographed, there's no way to un-red the paint in order to figure out what exact color values we used as our secret tones. The last step: I add my lemon yellow to your paint sample, and you add your cornflower blue to my paint sample. What do we have? The same exact color. And this color is our key, even though we've shared no sensitive information over phones or through the mail. No codebook or top-secret keyword necessary!
It was this kind of thinking that led to fun stuff like RSA encryption, which is also based on this idea of public keys. If we know that THEY are out there, watching us, then it follows (perhaps perversely) that privacy should have a public component. As soon as the middleman is subtracted, and secrecy is a self-made art, then we only have to trust ourselves. Perfect security, right?
(Well, theoretically.)
Here, let's try a little thought experiment, courtesy of Simon Singh. I call you up and say "red;" for those of you who harp on particulars, let's say it's Pantone Red 032. You take a cup of Red 032, and mix in a cup of some secret color of your own--let's say cornflower blue. Meanwhile, I have mixed in a cup of my own secret color: lemon yellow. Now we mail each other these samples.
Okay, even if someone wire-tapped our little "Red 032" conversation, and even if our mailed samples are intercepted and photographed, there's no way to un-red the paint in order to figure out what exact color values we used as our secret tones. The last step: I add my lemon yellow to your paint sample, and you add your cornflower blue to my paint sample. What do we have? The same exact color. And this color is our key, even though we've shared no sensitive information over phones or through the mail. No codebook or top-secret keyword necessary!
It was this kind of thinking that led to fun stuff like RSA encryption, which is also based on this idea of public keys. If we know that THEY are out there, watching us, then it follows (perhaps perversely) that privacy should have a public component. As soon as the middleman is subtracted, and secrecy is a self-made art, then we only have to trust ourselves. Perfect security, right?
(Well, theoretically.)
posted by private.invective at 10:26 PM
2 Comments:
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Having a blog--unless you happen upon a man bites dog story that gets picked-up-on--it like having a private diary right out in the open.
I think you are onto something--the best disguise is no disguise at all.
Bodoc
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