Re: The role of Culture and Religion on Solitaire and other card based encryption schemes.

From: Mailman (mailman_at_anonymous.org)
Date: 03/25/04 

Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 00:35:29 +0100

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 08:29:38 +1000, David Eather wrote:

> In an oppressive regime anyone carrying a message will want to pass as
> surreptitiously as possible. Anything that may stick out as slightly
> unusual has to go. In truth I can't think of an Eastern European regime
> where you would need a hand cipher. If you were communicating between
> Orthodox churches/priests/monks or nuns (imagine this in the Stalinist era)
> then the use of playing cards is a dead give away and would never work. It
> also wouldn't work with some Pentecostal/charismatic versions of
> Christianity.
>
> The sharp end of the stick was not pointed at Eastern Europe. The purpose
> of my post was to alert the designers of hand ciphers that what is normal in
> Western culture (and hence passes without notice) is not universal and the
> difference needs to be considered in order to avoid wasted effort or
> endangered lives.
>
> A cipher intended to work within an oppressive regime like the Taliban could
> never use playing cards. Playing cards would also not work in some very
> poor societies or in the more specialised example above. Context has to be
> considered. I like the idea of storing the key outside the body - it cuts
> down on rubber hose cryptography which oppressive regimes are very good at.
> Using playing cards is a good idea, but not a universal answer.

You'd be surprised what you can get away with even in an oppressive
regime. To take the earlier poster's remarks, I can confirm that normal
playing cards were common in Eastern Europe (inclusive of Orthodox
countries). You may also be surprised to hear that some of these
countries, as well as some of the Islamic countries, have quite good
bridge teams: not quite as run of the mill as one would perhaps like, but
still quite acceptable in a lot of places.

Still looking at Solitaire and its ilk: concealing a pack of cards could
be more problematic in places that use other card types (such as Central
Europe). Even worse: Solitaire relies on a secret key which needs to be
memorized (or kept as a fixed card pack).

To take another example: in the fifties the KGB used a shipping almanac as
a kind of one time additive pad. Perfectly acceptable at the time - and
rather impossible these days... 

-- 
Mailman
Quantcast