Re: Electronic Grille Cipher?

["E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>]

From:	IN%"wlkngowl@unix.asb.com"  6-FEB-1996 03:23:01.15

>An idea occurred to me the other day, for hiding multiple
texts in one file using multiple keys.  The gist of it is to
take a reasonably large file of random data and then to hide
the bytes of a message in scattered locations.  The method of
determining where each byte is would be based on a good cipher
which for each iteration would return a relative offset from
the last location in the file.
-----------------
	I had a similar idea a bit back, and Lewis/Futplex kindly referred me
to some parts of the Archives discussing it. However, the main objection to
this idea was that the cops would just do a search warrant for the second group
of information. My solution to this is to have quite a few groups of
information, which would admittedly make the spacing problem a bit hard.
The following might be an example for someone of such a scheme:

A. Accounting information that you give the IRS (and the cops if they come)
B. Your collection of vanilla, heterosexual alt.sex.stories (give to cops)
C. Your collection of digitized playboy centerfolds (give to cops) 
D. Your collection of, say, homosexual bestiality stories (don't give)
E. Your collection of digitized photos of the above (don't give)
F. Your _real_ accounting information (don't give)
G. Your plans to violently overthrow the government (don't give).

	You'd just reveal the top two at first; if they asked if there was
anything more, you'd reveal the third. All three are things that you can easily
justify wanting privacy for- and some of them are ones that you'd want
different people to have access to (your accountant vs your lover, for A & B).
	-Allen