The K-Landnews TheEditor is still chuckling at the suggestion that Apple and Google enabling device encryption by default is being sold to the public as potentially putting some people "above the law".
So, we decided to be nice and indulge it* by telling our readers a bit more about yesterday's conversation.
[TheEditor] Who the f@@k has any sense left? You have been able to encrypt your tablet or smart phone for years, doesn't anybody bother to look at the Settings? In Android, they warn you that, if you lose the password after encrypting the device, no one can access the contents. All of a sudden, having that enabled by default is such a big deal?
Please...
Please indeed, bunch of cowards!
Can we talk about the slices, please?
What about it?
We should tell our readers more about how stuff is stored on devices.
Go ahead, then, leave me out of it, I need to sit back and enjoy the fact that iPhonies get prominent mention in the same breath as pedophiles and terrorists. I mean, the boss constantly wielding his iPhone at work, I can see how that terrorizes folks, and I once had a manager who behaved as if he was above the law.
As a matter of fact, the concept of slices is everywhere in computing. Pretty much every cool high level programming language has some in-built function for slicing strings (which is really only a fancy name for a piece of text plus, some non-alphabet stuff).
That function map be called slice, or split, and there is a corresponding join, too.
Even deeper, slices of data have been with us since the dawn of data storage, except that they are more familiar to you as sectors or blocks on the old floppy, the hard disk, or the flashy flash memory. When you save a file, it is broken up into slices (blocks), when you retrieve it from disk, blocks are read, re-assembled, and, voila, you have what looks like a continuous file!
Those wonderfully scary databases that are the backbone of storing Big Data stuff are nothing other than a layer of slices on top of slices. Think of a database as a set of little boxes that accept only a certain kind of stuff and enforce it by slapping your with a cryptic error message when you get it wrong. They are the equivalent of your dad's neatly sorted and ordered workshop boxes of screws, nuts, and bolts. And just like dad, they get mad when you put something that looks right to you but not to him into the "wrong" box.
A virtual operating system? More slices on top of slices.
A web page with an attachment on the way to or from your computer? Slices.
Okay, we should stop with slices now because it will upset some people if we go too far.
Encryption?
It is a way to scramble data (using a key) in such a way that they cannot be read by humans or by computers with first applying an unscrambling method (using a key).
Depending on how good - or how strong - the key and the program that applies it are, it is either hard or difficult to get the original piece of data back.
So, encryption can be used by bad guys and should be banned, right?
Then why shouldn't be ban, for example, Chinese, or English, or Navajo, or Dothraki?
Any natural language consists of data, keys, and processing algorithms. Drop a hillbilly like the blogster in the hinterlands of Mongolia, and the result will be pretty similar to sitting in front of a computer staring at mQENBEpWTPIBCAC3bXBy.
The example of Navajo is even better because of the real life intersection of the Navajo language and its "power of encryption". The story of the Navajo code talkers is our preferred example of natural language as a form of encryption. It worked, didn't it?
Complaining about encryption is an easy fashionable way to score panic points.
And totally unrelated to your security.
Lead in the gasoline of motor vehicles and in paint was exponentially more dangerous and deadly than encryption by individuals will ever be: How Lead Caused America's Violent Crime Epedemic.
The humble fridge in your home has saved more lives than any politicians or lawyers can take credit for.
The list goes on and on.
We had to stop because TheEditor stopped chuckling and said: Given that child abuse overwhelmingly takes place within families, put cameras into the homes of everybody who has kids it you are really serious.
If you, dear readers, have any ideas how we can stop TheEditor from interfering, please let us know.
* TheEditor insists on fully gender neutral presentation, hence the "it".
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