Jim’s Daily Rant. Wired By The Numbers. [with PS]
- Jim Costa
- Apr 8
- 3 min read
Somewhere around 2005 I purchased my first copy of Wired Magazine, which had been in business for about ten years. It was for high techee and programmer types.
That issue had a fascinating article about a college math professor that felt he had a golden ticket to wealth and fame. He wrote a math program with an equation that was done on the fly and could not be cracked by strangers. It was to be used to encrypt emails so no one but the recipient could read it.
It worked like this. The author would email the receiver the encryption formula, the key to opening it. Later whenever the receiver got an email from that sender, it had a different number that needed to be used to open it. Each mail had a different key. The receiver’s personal software was needed to crack that code number.
The Math Professor was set for fortune until he got a call from NASA who had a security issue with it. NASA set up an appointment with him for the following day for Mr. NASA and his attorney. The Professor, being a mathematician, set up the meeting by the numbers; he had his lawyer-man 2.
Mr. NASA informed him that if he released his program in the US he was violating the National Security. Then the DOJ attorney read a formal letter to him giving notice to him that if he released the program in the US he would be in violation of abetting Treason and jailed for 30 years. When both the Professor and his lawyer asked to see the letter or get a copy, they were declined due to “National Security Reasons”.
The Professor thought about it over the weekend then called a buddy in Australia, sent him the program and then the buddy released it in the US for all persons to freely use it in their own programs. The Professor never heard back from the DOJ or Mr. NASA.
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Today I read this article:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department dispatched armed U.S. marshals to deliver a letter warning a fired career pardon attorney about testifying to congressional Democrats, her lawyer said in a letter seen by Reuters on Monday.
“This highly unusual step of directing armed law enforcement officers to the home of a former Department of Justice employee who has engaged in no misconduct, let alone criminal conduct, simply to deliver a letter, is both unprecedented and completely inappropriate,” Michael Bromwich, a lawyer representing fired pardon attorney Liz Oyer, wrote to the Justice Department.
The Marshals were called off on Friday only after Oyer acknowledged receiving the letter, once she located it in a secondary email that she had not been using to communicate with the department’s human resources officials, Bromwich wrote.
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PS. Mel Gibson's Apparently Getting His Gun Rights Restored. Now, About Everyone Else's...
[Gibson has been an outspoken supporter of trump.]
The New York Times reported on Thursday (3 April), citing an unnamed source familiar with the Justice Department, that Attorney General Pam Bondi approved the decision to restore Gibson’s rights. The source added that the specifics are expected to be published in the Federal Register.
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