CDR: Re: Treatment of subjugated people (and bagpipes)
But do remember that St Patrick wasn't Irish at all. He was an English boy, stolen by Irish pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland.
De-lurking briefly to correct this... St Patrick was a Romano-Briton. There were no English in Britain at the time he lauched his Irish mission. There was no English language, and certainly no English identity. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes that make up the English (an identity that only established itself when the Franco-Norman ruling dynasty in England lost its territories in France) were spread across Germany and Denmark at the time.
But this is mostly just laziness. When Patrick didn't do what he was told, I'm sure that his masters made no effort to learn his language. They just shouted at him louder in Gaelic.
Patrick would have spoken Gaelic or Latin as his first language. The Irish would have been no more difficult to understand than a Californian to a Noo Yawker. The upper echelons of Irish society may even have spoken Latin. All the best Tiarnan
On Mon, 4 Sep 2000 ocorrain@esatclear.ie wrote:
Patrick would have spoken Gaelic or Latin as his first language. The Irish would have been no more difficult to understand than a Californian to a Noo Yawker. The upper echelons of Irish society may even have spoken Latin.
An interesting point: There are ancient inscriptions in Wales that no one has been able to read in modern times. Deciphering an unknown langauge, not related to known languages, when it is written in an unknown script is a feat of linguistics that transcends mere cryptanalysis and has, so far, rarely or never been done. And, as language, doubtless it has regular structure, patterns, grammar, and the flexibility of use that people in everyday lives need in speaking - and presumably they're not even encrypted. "Poor Man's Crypto", possibly even better than digital crypto, may consist in creating an artificial language together, and then using it whenever you don't want to be eavesdropped on. Bear
Ray Dillinger wrote:
"Poor Man's Crypto", possibly even better than digital crypto, may consist in creating an artificial language together, and then using it whenever you don't want to be eavesdropped on.
cf my remarks and questions on the use of Lojban for a personal log. Lojban is an artificial language with a user base of several hundred. I started a thread in mid-July. The consensus, from this list and some law-oriented newsgroups, is that you can't be forced to translate a journal written in a non-English language. Possibly you can't even be forced to identify the language it's written in. The matter of whether you can be forced to either decrypt encrypted files or to provide the key is more confused: I got approximately equal numbers of responses saying you can't be forced to decrypt and saying you can be so forced. I have not run either of those questions past lawyers that I've paid, so the responses may be worth no more than I paid for them. SRF -- Steve Furlong, Computer Condottiere Have GNU, will travel 518-374-4720 sfurlong@acmenet.net
At 4:38 PM -0400 9/4/00, Steven Furlong wrote:
Ray Dillinger wrote:
"Poor Man's Crypto", possibly even better than digital crypto, may consist in creating an artificial language together, and then using it whenever you don't want to be eavesdropped on.
cf my remarks and questions on the use of Lojban for a personal log. Lojban is an artificial language with a user base of several hundred. I started a thread in mid-July. The consensus, from this list and some law-oriented newsgroups, is that you can't be forced to translate a journal written in a non-English language. Possibly you can't even be forced to identify the language it's written in.
The matter of whether you can be forced to either decrypt encrypted files or to provide the key is more confused: I got approximately equal numbers of responses saying you can't be forced to decrypt and saying you can be so forced.
I have not run either of those questions past lawyers that I've paid, so the responses may be worth no more than I paid for them.
And almost any attorney you would be able to hire would not have a clue on this issue. Possibly some world-class first and fifth amendment scholars would have a clue, possibly some EFF- or former-EFF lawyers, possibly some cyberlaw-clued folks, but not any lawyer you'd fine in a typical city in the phone book. The specific issue of compelling a key has not yet been tested in a major court case. Mike Godwin wrote up some views on this some years ago (long enough ago that I quoted it in my 1994 "Cyphernomicon'). There are good reasons for the governments of the world (even Italy's, for our Italian friend who is insulted that we don't write enough about Italy) not to want to test the limits of the law: adhocracies like ambiguity. And of course they're worried they might lose a high-visibility case involving crypto, so they don't push the issue. Lastly, in most cases they don't need to try to compell disclosure of a key. They either have the records or can get them some other way, or they can rig the case some other way. Having a case depend on a particular encrypted record is unlikely, though it may be more common in the future. What about the right to remain silent? How does the Fifth Amendment impinge on this issue? A criminal defendant has the right to remain silent. He cannot be compelled to tell where evidence is located. He cannot be compelled to testify against himself. (BTW, don't even bother, anyone, to bring out the old chestnut of a person picking "I committed this crime" as his passphrase. Dealt with convincingly many years ago.) Of more likely interest will be encrypted records in "discovery" cases. And in those cases a person is required to provide reasonable assistance, e.g., in helping the attorney of a spouse in determining where assets are located. Encryption would not even be an issue. The judge would simply order the records converted into readable form, on pain of contempt or, worse, on pain of a divorce settlement massively favoring the spouse. (A nit: sometimes parties in a case try to overwhelm the other side with junk, as in shipping hundreds of boxes of documents to the other side. The IBM antitrust case, for example. This might be a good case to look at to see how and where the court compelled IBM to help in deciphering (English meaning, not crypto meaning) the hundreds of thousands of documents.) --Tim May --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
A criminal defendant has the right to remain silent. He cannot be compelled to tell where evidence is located. He cannot be compelled to testify against himself. (BTW, don't even bother, anyone, to bring out the old chestnut of a person picking "I committed this crime" as his passphrase. Dealt with convincingly many years ago.)
Can you expand on that? I don't remember that issue being dealt with in a legal manner at all. -Ian
At 4:54 PM -0700 9/4/00, dis-list@rebelbase.com wrote:
A criminal defendant has the right to remain silent. He cannot be compelled to tell where evidence is located. He cannot be compelled to testify against himself. (BTW, don't even bother, anyone, to bring out the old chestnut of a person picking "I committed this crime" as his passphrase. Dealt with convincingly many years ago.)
Can you expand on that?
I don't remember that issue being dealt with in a legal manner at all.
How many years have you been subscribed? How much of the archives have you searched? In a nutshell, there is a recognized difference between the form of a statement and the content of a statement. A court would stipulate that uttering a passphrase would only be used in the context of the passphrase, not as an admission of guilt. As I said, there's a section in the Cyphernomicon on this. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
At 1:24 PM -0700 9/4/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
An interesting point: There are ancient inscriptions in Wales that no one has been able to read in modern times. Deciphering an unknown langauge, not related to known languages, when it is written in an unknown script is a feat of linguistics that transcends mere cryptanalysis and has, so far, rarely or never been done.
And, as language, doubtless it has regular structure, patterns, grammar, and the flexibility of use that people in everyday lives need in speaking - and presumably they're not even encrypted.
"Poor Man's Crypto", possibly even better than digital crypto, may consist in creating an artificial language together, and then using it whenever you don't want to be eavesdropped on.
How is your "Poor Man's Crypto" different in any way from _codes_? Cf. any standard text on why codes are not nearly as useful as ciphers. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
At 01:24 PM 9/4/2000 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote: ...
An interesting point: There are ancient inscriptions in Wales that no one has been able to read in modern times. Deciphering an unknown langauge, not related to known languages, when it is written in an unknown script is a feat of linguistics that transcends mere cryptanalysis and has, so far, rarely or never been done.
And, as language, doubtless it has regular structure, patterns, grammar, and the flexibility of use that people in everyday lives need in speaking - and presumably they're not even encrypted.
"Poor Man's Crypto", possibly even better than digital crypto, may consist in creating an artificial language together, and then using it whenever you don't want to be eavesdropped on.
That sound like the Navajo codetalkers. I can see two easy problems with this. A secret shared is no secret. If even one person versed in the language were to side with the opposing front, all records written in that cypher would become open. A new language would have to have new words for practically everything. Any borrowed word would open the language up to analysis. If you didn't get around to inventing a word for digital recording. You had digital, but you forgot recording, then saying <digital> recording in a sentance, would give someone a clue to grammatical structure. Unfortunately, to get a sufficient vocabulary to be flexible, would require a larger population using the language. If the language is sufficiently difficult to learn, it might be useful as a code but it would be hard to extend the population who could use it. If I remember my history, which is not to say that I do, the Codetalkers method worked because there was a small population who knew the language already, none of them were acquired by the Japaneese, learning the language was difficult, (the missionary who suggested it had managed to learn it some, if memory serves), and the language had existed, and been used, enough to be sufficiently complex. Still not complex enough. They had to spell some things out, like placenames. If just two people contrived it, then what they might have to say to one another might be secure, but would be limited to topics they had discussed in detail before, or related topics. If a population of 1,000 spoke it with fluency, and had for several years, the language may be able to deal with just about any current concept or object, but the opposition would almost certainly have access to the language as well. This would seem to limit the language to making disparaging comments about the person ahead of you at the checkout stand, confident that she didn't know what you were saying about him or her. Or discussing the shoplifting of luxeries with your schoolmates, relatively confident that the store clerk wouldn't know what you were planning, or even that you might not be casually discussing last nights game. Both examples I've suspected I might have witnessed. Good luck, Sean
At 04:24 PM 9/4/00 -0400, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Deciphering an unknown langauge, not related to known languages, when it is written in an unknown script is a feat of linguistics that transcends mere cryptanalysis and has, so far, rarely or never been done.
Don't the linguists typically rely on a major crib (e.g., the Rosetta stone)?
On Mon, 4 Sep 2000 ocorrain@esatclear.ie wrote:
But do remember that St Patrick wasn't Irish at all. He was an English boy, stolen by Irish pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland.
De-lurking briefly to correct this...
Oooooo Shows what happen when you post casually to the cypherpunks list ;-) You are right. I should have said that he was a British lad.
St Patrick was a Romano-Briton. There were no English in Britain at the time he lauched his Irish mission. There was no English language, and certainly no English identity. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes that make up the English (an identity that only established itself when the Franco-Norman ruling dynasty in England lost its territories in France) were spread across Germany and Denmark at the time.
But this is mostly just laziness. When Patrick didn't do what he was told, I'm sure that his masters made no effort to learn his language. They just shouted at him louder in Gaelic.
Patrick would have spoken Gaelic or Latin as his first language. The Irish would have been no more difficult to understand than a Californian to a Noo Yawker. The upper echelons of Irish society may even have spoken Latin.
Several authorities, eg the Cathoic Encyclopedia, say that St Patrick became fluent in the language of the Irish while in slavery. Some claim that he was born in Scotland, some say in Wales. None support your suggestion that the language of his masters was his native tongue. The real point here is that the Irish, generally portrayed as victims of the British, were sometimes victims, sometimes villians -- like most everybody else. PS. I am immensely fond of Ireland; me mother is Irish, in fact ;-) -- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015
Patrick would have spoken Gaelic or Latin as his first language. The Irish would have been no more difficult to understand than a Californian to a Noo Yawker. The upper echelons of Irish society may even have spoken Latin.
Several authorities, eg the Cathoic Encyclopedia, say that St Patrick became fluent in the language of the Irish while in slavery. Some claim that he was born in Scotland, some say in Wales.
Both Scotland and Wales contained people who spoke Celtic languages. Although it is difficult to determine where Patrick is from, I believe the scholarly working consensus is that he was from the Roman province of Britannia, where the majority of the inhabitants would have spoken a language of Celtic origin. Perhaps my analogy of New York and Californain English was misleading: a truer example would be the relationship of Spanish with Catalan, or Sicilian with Tyrolean. That's to say, mutually intelligible, with difficulty. Traders and slave-traders (such as the slaver who captured Patrick) would have traded with the Roman Empire in Britain and elsewhere, so presumably a lingua franca emerged. No doubt Patrick learned his powerful mastery of Old Irish from his captors. [If you want to read more on the subject, from sources more up-to-date and historically accurate than the Catholic Encyclopedia, try http://www.ucc.ie/~peritia for a jumping off point.]
None support your suggestion that the language of his masters was his native tongue.
The real point here is that the Irish, generally portrayed as victims of the British, were sometimes victims, sometimes villians -- like most everybody else.
I don't deny it for a minute. I had a problem with the way you took the currently existing region known as England and its current (troubled) relations with Ireland, and projected it back into a period of history where an entirely different socio-political scene existed. All the best Tiarnan
--
When Patrick didn't do what he was told, I'm sure that his masters made no effort to learn his language. They just shouted at him louder in Gaelic.
At 07:17 PM 9/4/2000 +0100, ocorrain@esatclear.ie wrote:
Patrick would have spoken Gaelic or Latin as his first language.The Irish would have been no more difficult to understand than a Californian to a Noo Yawker. The upper echelons of Irish society may even have spoken Latin.
The upper echelons of Irish society did not speak Latin, and the inhabitants of England at that time did not speak Gaelic. Ireland had never been conquered by the Romans. Latin had long since ceased to be the language of civilization, and had become merely the language of conquerors. Irish literature at the time was vigorous and thriving, while secular Roman literature at the time was non-existent. The nearest thing to literate and readable works produced in Latin at that time were evangelical texts created Christian proselytizers. The greatest literature of that era was Augustine's "confessions", which gives you an indication of how low the Roman civilization had sunk. At that time people learnt latin only because their masters shouted at them in latin, not because there was anything interesting to read or hear. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG jLpeTtmZcxp+K3zt6NovjkMT3+D13j0NLuDiBYZp 4NDsFXixvkrTO78zJc30/1dE3TfFaF7VPUGFyfBdz
participants (10)
-
David Honig -
dis-list＠rebelbase.com -
James A. Donald -
Jim Dixon -
ocorrain＠esatclear.ie -
Ray Dillinger -
Sean Roach -
Steven Furlong -
Tiarnan O Corrain
-
Tim May