symbols for letters, such as the Greek letter âthetaâ for âgâ, the infinity sign for âhâ, and âdeltaâ for âsâ. He also used thirty-five numbers, letters and signs to substitute for some whole words: â2â for âandâ, âxâ for âinâ and so on. There were five other symbols for blanks or spaces and for double letters. Wily Gifford knew his way round the underground and highly endangered Catholic community of Tudor England and he made various detours in order to throw off possible pursuers. A good man to have on your side, was Gifford. One problem: he wasnât on Maryâs side. He was acting as a double agent and for at least a year he had been showing Maryâs letters to Elizabethâs spymaster-in-chief, Sir Francis Walsingham.
Walsingham had a cipher school going in London with one Thomas Phelippes (Philips) as his main man, who was described at the time as small, short-sighted and âslender every way, dark yellow haired on the head, and clear yellow bearded, eaten in the face with small poxâ. Phelippes worked on the âfrequency principleâ, matching the frequency of symbols to the frequency of real letters in normal writing, cracked the cipher and the codes, figured out what Babington was up to and told Walsingham. The Tudor regime was extremely well geared up for torturing, disembowelling and executing (in that order) its enemies, in particular Catholics. The point for Walsingham was not simply rounding up a dashing blade like Babington. The real prize was Mary herself. To secure her, they needed Maryâs authorization of the Babington plot, otherwise Elizabeth wouldnât authorize Maryâs execution. Sure enough, on 17 July 1586, Maryincriminated herself by talking of the âdesignâ. Phelippes deciphered the letter and marked it with a gallows sign.
But Walsingham was a belt-and-braces spymaster. He wanted names, more names. So he asked Phelippes to forge a postscript (in the cipher) on Maryâs letter to Babington, saying: âI would be glad to know the names and qualities of the six gentlemen which are to accomplish the designment [plot].â Babington and his pals were âcut down, their privities were cut off, bowelled alive and seeing, and quarteredâ. (For the record, it was their bodies that were cut into quarters, not their bowels or privities.)
Mary tried it on at her trial: âCan I be responsible for the criminal projects of a few desperate men which they planned without my knowledge and participation?â It didnât wash and she was beheaded in front of 300 people in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle.
The Snowden story is similar to that of Mary Queen of Scots in that it involves the codes and ciphers that are available to the rulers of a country or countries to defend themselves. In another way, though, it is completely different. No matter how suspicious we have been about the visibility of internet communication, many of us probably believed that our passwords were âsecureâ and that most of our internet âhistoryâ got deleted and died. We didnât invent these encryptions. They were given to us. Part of this false sense of security (literally and metaphorically) is intertwined with what weâve understood about âencryptionâ. If, like me, you are illiterate in relation to the language(s) by which computers turn keyboard taps into words and images, then âencryptionâ is a piece of mystical babble. Itâs like saying: my account is quite secure because itâs âabracadabra-edâ. It turns out that this piece of babble is not only mystical for people like me, itâs also nonsense. Itâs not secure at all. Usually, the reasonwhy encryptions are not secure is because extremely clever people unlock them. In this case, though, something different has happened.
One way of relating the story of
Walsingham had a cipher school going in London with one Thomas Phelippes (Philips) as his main man, who was described at the time as small, short-sighted and âslender every way, dark yellow haired on the head, and clear yellow bearded, eaten in the face with small poxâ. Phelippes worked on the âfrequency principleâ, matching the frequency of symbols to the frequency of real letters in normal writing, cracked the cipher and the codes, figured out what Babington was up to and told Walsingham. The Tudor regime was extremely well geared up for torturing, disembowelling and executing (in that order) its enemies, in particular Catholics. The point for Walsingham was not simply rounding up a dashing blade like Babington. The real prize was Mary herself. To secure her, they needed Maryâs authorization of the Babington plot, otherwise Elizabeth wouldnât authorize Maryâs execution. Sure enough, on 17 July 1586, Maryincriminated herself by talking of the âdesignâ. Phelippes deciphered the letter and marked it with a gallows sign.
But Walsingham was a belt-and-braces spymaster. He wanted names, more names. So he asked Phelippes to forge a postscript (in the cipher) on Maryâs letter to Babington, saying: âI would be glad to know the names and qualities of the six gentlemen which are to accomplish the designment [plot].â Babington and his pals were âcut down, their privities were cut off, bowelled alive and seeing, and quarteredâ. (For the record, it was their bodies that were cut into quarters, not their bowels or privities.)
Mary tried it on at her trial: âCan I be responsible for the criminal projects of a few desperate men which they planned without my knowledge and participation?â It didnât wash and she was beheaded in front of 300 people in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle.
The Snowden story is similar to that of Mary Queen of Scots in that it involves the codes and ciphers that are available to the rulers of a country or countries to defend themselves. In another way, though, it is completely different. No matter how suspicious we have been about the visibility of internet communication, many of us probably believed that our passwords were âsecureâ and that most of our internet âhistoryâ got deleted and died. We didnât invent these encryptions. They were given to us. Part of this false sense of security (literally and metaphorically) is intertwined with what weâve understood about âencryptionâ. If, like me, you are illiterate in relation to the language(s) by which computers turn keyboard taps into words and images, then âencryptionâ is a piece of mystical babble. Itâs like saying: my account is quite secure because itâs âabracadabra-edâ. It turns out that this piece of babble is not only mystical for people like me, itâs also nonsense. Itâs not secure at all. Usually, the reasonwhy encryptions are not secure is because extremely clever people unlock them. In this case, though, something different has happened.
One way of relating the story of
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