[Milsurplus] Cipher Challenge!

[Dave Maples]

All: I'm not so certain about that.  This is, after all, a re-enactment.
The plaintext will be well-known.  Where's the threat?  If there's no
threat, why would our government get excited over this?

I don't want to preach a sermon here, but it's very easy to ascribe evil,
incompetence, etc. etc. etc., to government folks.  Far TOO easy, as a
matter of fact.  Having been a Fed contractor for over 20 years (through
administrations and Congresses from both political parties) and in the
private sector (Nextel, then Sprint) for over 8 years I can say with
assurance that the average Fed employee (be they civil servant or political
appointee) is trying very hard to make an extraordinarily-complex system do
something other than fall flat on its face while waiting for the inevitable
criticism and accusations of corruption / incompetence because they didn't
do a perfect job of it.  The reaction to all that is to become defensive or
otherwise just stop caring, and altogether too many of them do just that as
well.  If we as Americans relearned the idea of gratitude and demonstrated
that to our government folks (and others as well) perhaps they'd be more
inclined to be less defensive or afraid of making a mistake.

Hang toot, invite THEM to generate the plaintext.

End of sermon...all replies are welcome.

Dave WB4FUR

-----Original Message-----
From: milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net]On Behalf Of J Forster
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 11:50 AM
To: mikea
Cc: milsurplus
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Cipher Challenge!


It's doubtful US transmissions like that would be permitted in the
current political climate, IMO.

I suggested a similar, though much more modest, exercise some 6 years
ago and was booted out of a Canadian Yahoo group by its owner for the
effort.

Best,
-John



mikea wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 05, 2007 at 09:14:42AM -0500, Al Klase wrote:
> > Get out your Captain Midnight decoder ring:
> >
> > http://www.tnmoc.co.uk/cipher1.htm
>
> Fascinating. That, Gentlemen, is real military surplus gear.
>
> By no means the least fascinating part is that German hams are
> going to be allowed to send an encrypted message using a military
> cryptosystem for the specific purpose of resisting decryption.
>
> I, for one, am pleased as punch to see this reenactment, but have to
> wonder if hams in the US would be able to get permission to make the
> transmission.
>
> --
> Mike Andrews, W5EGO
> mikea at mikea.ath.cx
> Tired old sysadmin

______________________________________________________________
Milsurplus mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/milsurplus
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:Milsurplus at mailman.qth.net