Re: RIP, Carl Gorman, Code Talker

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

(As Gary seems to be a newcomer, let me remind him and others that
"cypherpunks@toad.com" is not the place to send messages to the list.
Please use one of the distributed addresses.  It's been a year since the
list moved off of toad.com. I wish John would just start bouncing messages
sent to toad.com and be done with it.)


At 11:16 PM -0800 1/30/98, Gary Harland wrote:

>- when asked why he helped America after all the abuse he took
>growing up as a Navajo, he basically said (my interpretation
>here) he was fighting to protect the Navajo, not particularily
>America, from the Japanese. A geographical dilemma.

Never understimate the power of blind chauvinistic patriotism. Killing Japs
was the honorable thing to do, even for Injuns.


>- aside from the NSA sucking up everything in sight relating to
>languages, doesn't Chomsky's theoretical 'Universal Syntax' (all
>human languages have an identical fundamental syntax) negate the
>effectiveness of the Code-Talker approach in the long run?

"All crypto is economics." One doesn't have to jump to theoretical mumbo
jumbo about a putative "identical fundamental syntax" to know that the
Navajo code talkers were not using an unbreakable system.

But what mattered is that, for the level of security needed on the
battlefield, the system was "essentially secure" against Japanese
translation. Sure, in time the Japanese could have found some experts on
Navajo, could have trained their own code talker translators, etc. But they
didn't have this time. (And if we posit "enough time," then the U.S.
military would have had enough time to drop the Navajo code talkers and
replace them with Ebonics code talkers. Dat be da jive, mo fo.)

"All crypto is economics."

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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