Alex's (good) idea about using creative spacing to hide an encrypted message is similar to that what I'd originally proposed (and of course it has to be hiding an *encrypted* message!). I've gotten a number of responses of the form "Why not just claim that an encrypted message is data?", but my original point was Plausible Deniability. That is, I was postulating an environment in which Big Brother has outlawed cryptography. Now, confronted with a confiscated message, the sender has to defend himself from the Inquisition. Can't just claim it's a sound file; the Inquisitor will want it played. The question I'm trying to answer
So I say, "Damn! CRC Error! Must be a bad disk. Well, no point in keeping THIS sitting around."
is how to produce on demand a causal explanation of data (which actually contains an encrypted message) that satisfies an investigator and doesn't reveal the encrypted message. Some simple scheme like, "Uh,
I understand what you want. Wish I understood how to do it. ;^)
it's the result of my new random number generation algorithm" isn't likely to be *satisfying* and is certain to produce the response, "OK, let's see the algorithm." +----------------------+----------------------------------------------------+ | J. Michael Diehl ;-) | I thought I was wrong once. But, I was mistaken. | | +----------------------------------------------------+ | mdiehl@triton.unm.edu| "I'm just looking for the opportunity to be | | Thunder@forum | Politically Incorrect! | | (505) 299-2282 | <me> | +----------------------+----------------------------------------------------+