"Benjamin M. Brewer" wrote:
>
> On Fri, 21 Jul 2000, Trei, Peter wrote:
> > It's my understanding that there's a precedent in which
> > a government audit of a merchant was halted, or at
> > least seriously delayed, when it was discovered that all
> > of his business records where in Hebrew. The court
> > ruled that (1) He had no obligation to keep records in
> > English, and (2) He had no obligation to provide a
> > translation.
>
> Just a slight question. What's the difference between an rare language and
> english encrypted with some sort of algorithm? How can the suits declare
> one piece of text as encrypted, while the ancient language of waazoo is
> just a really fucked-up language?
>
> Could someone write an encryption algorithm that made the text into some
> sort of non-english looking language, without making it obvious that the
> information had been encrypted? How secure could such a algorithm be?
Shooting from the cuff:
A rare but natural language could plausibly be a suspect's "working
langauge" with no presumed deliberate attempt to conceal information.
An encrypted file or file system is presumed to have been deliberately
processed to conceal information.
I don't know where the use of an artificial language would fall on
this scale. I doubt anyone else knows, either, since predicting court
decisions is a chancy game.
--
Steve Furlong, Computer Condottiere Have GNU, will travel
518-374-4720 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
