Crypotography short

Crypto 

    Why is secrecy good – why don’t we want folks listening to what we consider ‘private’? Because for even ‘mainstream’ folk, the old aphorism: ‘if you’re not doing ‘anything’ then you have nothing to hide…” sounds more than just a skosh hollow and naïve.  

Now this won’t be a full blown history of cryptography here, there are many better available [Cryptography]-but some terms will have to be agreed upon and/or explained.  

      Secret – Not much is ever really secret, we’ve seen that from the news lately but: something [information/data] which has had at least one preventive method applied to it so that it’s not commonly available 

     So, we’ve been trying to keep things secret from our family, friends, teachers, acquaintances, police, for a long time. Just because of a habit and simply because we’re humans. Never before  has the need for some viable form of secrecy to come upon the scene been greater.  

As Snowden said, “ we should each one of us be able to secure any and everything we do on the internet, without worry and, without the need for highly complicated methods and practices as is now. We each have a right to privacy.” And why not? 

     If you as a human want to keep something private, whats the issue.  You see, most folks including a lot of IT folk start getting strange looks on their faces when folks start asking about protecting data, securing information online, etc. Why the strange looks in the eyes – well these days it does seems to take a very large and deep amount of IT knowledge and experience to accomplishing something of this nature.  Many people wonder what it would take, what new development will be required to allow us to be that secure on the internet during work and personal time?  What would this new development look like and what direction would it take – would it attempt to secure each individual device? Is that possible?

     What about all the wireless payments we’re all getting ready to make from our smart phones, will those all be secured no matter what device we send it to?    The ‘key’ to cryptography

    Key – a set of data that ‘unlocks’ and or makes the data usable after it had been made secret for safety.           

     Cryptography in itself is a type of ‘software’ and, has been for some time. So why and how is that? If one were to consider how cryptography came about and it’s uses through time it’s clear that concealing matters of state and financial communications has been done for at least one millennia and that these systems have been very adaptable and until recently robust enough for the need of the time.  

     But our need for privacy has grown exponentially lately and, that need is not likely to decrease anytime in the near future.  

     So is there a real need for cryptography
    If you want anybody that can easily download materials and apps on the internet to be able to look at your financial records – you don’t need cryptography.  
    If it doesn’t bother you to let absolutely anyone that can take a peek at your medical records – no crypto.  
    If allowing anyone, including government actors that might not have your best interests at heart, to intercept any communication coming in or out of your computer – no passwords for you!  

One can see that the need for robust protection easily and logically implemented could really be key.  
Why is software the answer? Because you can’t protect absolutely every device and, software controls the devices in any case – but that’s for a different story and time.  

v/r 

dQ