John, Your snipe at NASA is probably uncalled for. A sentence fragment quoted from a spokesperson at press conference almost certainly does not reflect the professional judgment of the people who designed the system.
As someone who is occasionally quoted (and just as often misquoted) in the press, I can imagine it was at least as likely that the question was "why was encryption used?" as "why do you want the box back." To say nothing of the popular (and even technical) confusion between encryption and encoding. I can certainly imagine very good reasons that they'd want to keep the encoding and frequencies used to control the shuttle secret; if nothing else, to prevent denial of service. Do you really, honestly belive that none of the people designing a secure communication system for the shuttle were even remotely acquainted with the basic principles of the subject? Or did you just want to make a snide remark at the expense of people who are obviously now the subject of enormous scrutiny? One would think technologists would be wise enough not to assume too much about some sound byte without knowing its context, but personal experience suggests that a substantial number of us just jump at the chance to interpret everything we read in a 500 word article in the popular press as if it reflects the entire body of thought on some subject. For example, I got about a dozen email messages from people complaining about how I obviously advocate security through obscurity after something I wrote was slightly misquoted (in an otherwise carefully written article) as suggesting that people use keys that are hard to get blanks for. Almost everyone complaining had also read the source for that quote (which added a qualification that this is probably doesn't offer much protection), but that didn't matter. People want to believe what they read in the newspaper, even when they know the facts first hand. -matt > As reported by AP: > > | Among the most important [debris] they were seeking was > | a device that allows for the encryption of communication > | between the shuttle and NASA controllers. A NASA spokesman > | in Houston, John Ira Petty, said Friday that NASA feared > | the technology could be used "to send bogus signals to the > | shuttle." > > Apparently some folks skipped class the day Kerchhoffs' > Principle was covered. > > One wonders what other shuttle systems were designed > with comparable disregard of basic principles. > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > The Cryptography Mailing List > Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]