(As Gary seems to be a newcomer, let me remind him and others that "cypherpunks@toad.com" is not the place to send messages to the list. Please use one of the distributed addresses. It's been a year since the list moved off of toad.com. I wish John would just start bouncing messages sent to toad.com and be done with it.) At 11:16 PM -0800 1/30/98, Gary Harland wrote:
- when asked why he helped America after all the abuse he took growing up as a Navajo, he basically said (my interpretation here) he was fighting to protect the Navajo, not particularily America, from the Japanese. A geographical dilemma.
Never understimate the power of blind chauvinistic patriotism. Killing Japs was the honorable thing to do, even for Injuns.
- aside from the NSA sucking up everything in sight relating to languages, doesn't Chomsky's theoretical 'Universal Syntax' (all human languages have an identical fundamental syntax) negate the effectiveness of the Code-Talker approach in the long run?
"All crypto is economics." One doesn't have to jump to theoretical mumbo jumbo about a putative "identical fundamental syntax" to know that the Navajo code talkers were not using an unbreakable system. But what mattered is that, for the level of security needed on the battlefield, the system was "essentially secure" against Japanese translation. Sure, in time the Japanese could have found some experts on Navajo, could have trained their own code talker translators, etc. But they didn't have this time. (And if we posit "enough time," then the U.S. military would have had enough time to drop the Navajo code talkers and replace them with Ebonics code talkers. Dat be da jive, mo fo.) "All crypto is economics." --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."