A Snake-Oil FAQ

[Lucky Green]

At 16:05 7/21/96, Simon Spero wrote:

>Really? The only way I know of forcing a one-time pad is to use a hardware
>QM-based random number generator to generate every possible decrypt, thus
>creating a number of universes equal to the number of possible keys. Since
>you can't tell if you're universe is the right one, one should always
>verify the information obtained against a second source. IANAL, so I can't
>say if such a decrypt would count as probably cause.

Now here is a thought. Since there exists a key that allows you to decrypt
any OTP encrypted message to an arbitrary text of the same length as the
original message, an LEO could work backwards from a given text. "Yes, your
honor. We decrypted the suspects communications and discovered the
following confession." Scary thought.



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