From: mgraffam@mhv.net
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 16:50:44 +0800
To: jkthomson <jkthomson@bigfoot.com>
Subject: Re: your mail
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19980917131557.006c0a00@dowco.com>
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On Thu, 17 Sep 1998, jkthomson wrote:

> makes you wonder what hell they were using for encryption?  DES?


> MIAMI (AP) -- The shadowy world of a low-budget Cuban spy ring came to
> light in a courtroom, where an FBI agent testified that a suspect's
> apartment yielded computer diskettes containing coded references to Fidel
> Castro and plans to sabotage an aircraft hangar.

Note the word coded.

> Thousands of pages of encrypted computer documents were seized from the
> men's apartments.

> He said diskettes seized from Viramontez' apartment were sprinkled with the
> word "comrade" and coded references to "commandante," taken by
> investigators to refer to Castro.

I don't think that the documents were encrypted; I think that, perhaps,
they were just done in a code language.

If they were actually using a cipher system, you do have to wonder what it
was. 

Damn.. are cypherpunks the only people in the universe smart enough to use
PGP?!?

Michael J. Graffam (mgraffam@mhv.net)
http://www.mhv.net/~mgraffam -- Philosophy, Religion, Computers, Crypto, etc
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin, ~1784