Re: Is this as insecure as it sounds (was FWD: Complete Fax Privacy Draws C

[Jonathan Blake <grafolog@netcom.com>]

	Alan:

On Sun, 31 Dec 1995, Alan L. Bostick wrote:

> This turned up on alt.anonymous.  One would need a technical specification
> or a working model to be sure, but it sounds like home-grown snake oil

	Sounds like snake oil to me.

> >                 Complete Fax Privacy Draws Closer
> > personal nature, will soon be able to encrypt the contents and
> > make them unreadable to people for whom the messages are not

	PGP & a fax modem & a good OCR provides this.

	Or PGP the message and either e-mail or telex it.
	
> > placing a customized transparent plastic sheet over the message
> > could it be made readable.  Each individual, employee or manager
> > would be issued with his own plastic sheet and encryption key

	A plastic sheet is going to let me read it, and nobody 
	else?  I guess that would work, if one was using ---
	I forgotten what it was called, where you cut a number
	of squares on a sheet of cardboard, put over a sheet
	of paper, write the characters in the spaces, then
	lift the sheet, and write garbage to fill up the rest
	of the sheet, so that nobody else can see what the 
	characters were.  I think I was in kindergarten when 
	we did that, untill we discovered that our teacher
	could read our "secret" messages, without the cardboard
	sheet.  << The handwriting of the real message differed
	from that of the garbage words. >>

> >      Though the software has yet to be refined into a marketable
> > commodity, it is set to be introduced for public consumption in
> > the very near future.
	
	Is this the same as Jerry Pournelle "real soon now'?

	I think I'll stick to using PGP and sending e-mail.

        xan

        jonathon
        grafolog@netcom.com



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