From: liberty@gate.net (Jim Ray)
To: mfroomki@umiami.ir.miami.edu
Message Hash: 7ef4dcc90b7789db5aaa1cab906f1e62c76f7d968f28379bff5d94c9158eb9b3
Message ID: <199507171809.OAA76923@tequesta.gate.net>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1995-07-17 18:11:28 UTC
Raw Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 11:11:28 PDT
From: liberty@gate.net (Jim Ray)
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 95 11:11:28 PDT
To: mfroomki@umiami.ir.miami.edu
Subject: Re: Root Causes Roots
Message-ID: <199507171809.OAA76923@tequesta.gate.net>
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Professor Froomkin writes:
>Jim didn't take my Con Law I course.
True, and from what I hear, I regret not taking it.
>
>In message <199507161819.OAA06090@bb.hks.net> Jim Ray writes:
>[cuts throughout]
>>
>> Amendment IX -- "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights
>> shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
> ^^^^^^^
>> [The right to write code was among many rights NOT enumerated.]
>>
>
>Very hard to argue that the right to write code (as opposed to,
>say, the right to write in code)
A distinction my feeble mind fails to grasp, as doing the one is required
in order to even make the other possible. [Now all can see why I had
so much trouble in law school.]
>existed in the late 18th century;
A short trip to:"CME's cryptography timeline" [Recently suggested
on this list] and found at URL:
http://www.clark.net/pub/cme/html/timeline.html
Reveals some interesting code-history.
[In case the good professor or others on the list are without a
SLIP/PPP connection, a not-so-short excerpt from CME's cryptography
timeline follows]:
_____________________________________________________________
- - From David Kahn's ``The Codebreakers'':
``It must be that as soon as a culture has reached a certain level,
probably measured largely by its literacy, cryptography appears
spontaneously -- as its parents, language and writing, probably also
did. The multiple human needs and desires that demand privacy among
two or more people in the midst of social life must inevitably lead to
cryptology wherever men thrive and wherever they write. Cultural
diffusion seems a less likely explanation for its occurrence in so many
areas, many of them distant and isolated.'' [p. 84]
The invention of cryptography is not limited to either civilians or the
government. Wherever the need for secrecy is felt, the invention occurs.
However, over time the quality of the best available system continues to
improve and those best systems were often invented by civilians.
Again, from David Kahn:
``It was the amateurs of cryptology who created the species. The
professionals, who almost certainly surpassed them in cryptanalytic
expertise, concentrated on down-to-earth problems of the systems that
were then in use but are now outdated.
The amateurs, unfettered to those realities, soared into the
empyrean of theory.'' [pp. 125-6]
In the list to follow (until I learn how to make tables in HTML), each
description starts with (date; civ or govt; source). Sources are
identified in full at the end.
about 1900 BC; civ; Kahn p.71; an Egyptian scribe used non-standard
hieroglyphs in an inscription. Kahn lists this as the first documented
example of written cryptography.
1500 BC; civ; Kahn p.75; a Mesopotamian tablet contains an enciphered
formula for the making of glazes for pottery.
500-600 BC; civ; Kahn p.77; Hebrew scribes writing down the book of
Jeremiah used a reversed-alphabet simple substitution cipher known as
ATBASH. (Jeremiah started dictating to Baruch in 605 BC but the chapters
containing these bits of cipher are attributed to a source labeled ``C''
(believed not to be Baruch) which could be an editor writing after the
Babylonian exile in 587 BC, someone contemporaneous with Baruch or even
Jeremiah himself.)
ATBASH was one of a few Hebrew ciphers of the time.
487 BC; govt; Kahn p.82; the Greeks used a device called the
``skytale'' -- a staff around which a long, thin strip of leather was
wrapped and written on. The leather was taken off and worn as a belt.
Presumably, the recipient would have a matching staff and the encrypting
staff would be left home.
50-60 BC; govt; Kahn p.83; Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) used a simple
substitution with the normal alphabet (just shifting the letters a fixed
amount) in government communciations. This cipher was less strong than
ATBASH, by a small amount, but in a day when few people read in the first
place, it was good enough.
<SNIP! Off to some [slightly] more modern times.>
1564; civ; Kahn p.144(footnote); Bellaso published an autokey cipher
improving on the work of Cardano who appears to have invented the idea.
1623; civ; Bacon; Sir Francis Bacon described a cipher which now
bears his name -- a biliteral cipher, known today as a 5-bit binary
encoding. He advanced it as a steganographic device -- by using variation
in type face to carry each bit of the encoding.
1585; civ; Kahn p.146; Blaise de Vigenre wrote a book on ciphers,
including the first authentic plaintext and ciphertext autokey systems
(in which previous plaintext or ciphertext letters are used for the
current letter's key). [Kahn p.147: both of these were forgotten and
re-invented late in the 19th century.] [The autokey idea survives today
in the DES CBC and CFB modes.]
1790's; civ/govt; Kahn p.192, Cryptologia v.5 No.4 pp.193-208; Thomas
Jefferson, possibly aided by Dr. Robert Patterson (a mathematician at U.
Penn.), invented his wheel cipher. This was re-invented in several forms
later and used in WW-II by the US Navy as the Strip Cipher, M-138-A.
1817; govt; Kahn p.195; Colonel Decius Wadsworth produced a geared
cipher disk with a different number of letters in the plain and cipher
alphabets -- resulting in a progressive cipher in which alphabets are used
irregularly, depending on the plaintext used.
1854; civ; Kahn p.198; Charles Wheatstone invented what has become
known as the Playfair cipher, having been publicized by his friend Lyon
Playfair. This cipher uses a keyed array of letters to make a digraphic
cipher which is easy to use in the field. He also re-invented the
Wadsworth device and is known for that one.
1857; civ; Kahn p.202; Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort's cipher (a
variant of what's called ``Vigenre'') was published by his brother,
after the admiral's death in the form of a 4x5 inch card.
1859; civ; Kahn p.203; Pliny Earle Chase published the first
description of a fractionating (tomographic) cipher.
1854; civ; Cryptologia v.5 No.4 pp.193-208; Charles Babbage seems to
have re-invented the wheel cipher.
1861-1980; civ; Deavours;
``A study of United States patents from the issuance of the
first cryptographic patent in 1861 through 1980 identified 1,769
patents which are primarily related to cryptography.'' [p.1]
1861; civ/(govt); Kahn p.207; Friedrich W. Kasiski published a book
giving the first general solution of a polyalphabetic cipher with
repeating passphrase, thus marking the end of several hundred years of
strength for the polyalphabetic cipher.
1861-5; govt; Kahn p.215; during the Civil War, possibly among other
ciphers, the Union used substitution of select words followed by word
columnar-transposition while the Confederacy used Vigenre (the solution
of which had just been published by Kasiski).
1891; govt/(civ); Cryptologia v.5 No.4 pp.193-208; Major Etienne
Bazeries did his version of the wheel cipher and published the design
in 1901 after the French Army rejected it. [Even though he was a military
cryptologist, the fact that he published it leads me to rate this as (civ)
as well as govt.]
<SNIP>
______________________________________________________________
End of copy from "CME's cryptography timeline." Thanks [and apologies]
to David Kahn, whose 1960s book is well worth buying, even today.
______________________________________________________________
Professor Froomkin continues:
>hence it is hard to argue that it could be "retained"
>today.
In view of the foregoing timeline excerpts, I would
respectfully disagree.
>
>Assuming that the ninth amendment has, or could have, teeth,
[I am certain it _would_, with ballot-access-fairness reform,
but that's a side issue, like abortion, that should *not*
occupy this list. I am, however, quite willing to discuss it
by private e-mail. JMR]
>it
>is unlikely to go beyond rights existing or closely analogous to
>those held by "the people" [free white males, more likely] at
>the time of the amendment's ratification. Just as well if you
>think about it carefully.
Careful thought reveals a atrong suspicion that the "3/5ths people"
[slaves] had more use for crypto at the time than free white males
did, but I doubt much, if any, evidence of that activity was
preserved, and I'm sure it was _forcefully_ discouraged if ever
discovered...My point is, slaves, or those who live in fear of
eventual slavery, for whatever reason, have a strong affinity for
cryptography. Note, for example, early use [mentioned in the timeline
above] by the Jewish people.
JMR
Regards, Jim Ray
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." Voltaire
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1995-07-17 (Mon, 17 Jul 95 11:11:28 PDT) - Re: Root Causes Roots - liberty@gate.net (Jim Ray)