These just in from a friend:
... thetileapp
<http://www.thetileapp.com/?utm_source=AdWords&utm_medium=CPC>
... take this FONT
<http://blogs.walkerart.org/design/2013/06/20/sang-mun-defiant-typeface-nsa-privacy/>
and shove it !
The first is for all the (other) gear-heads here who have been wanting
to build this for a decade or more now. The high-tech version of "the
Clapper" <http://www.asseenontv.com/the-clapper/detail.php?p=295535> .
Does anyone (admit to) have one of these? Didn't they also make a small
version for your keyring with audible response to help you find lost
keys? Or was that another "only available on TV" item?
There is a new breed of creature in the digital swamp... maybe they
should shape these like leeches because they will start being found
attached to everything and anything of presumed value.
And the "amber alert" for a stolen bicycle is just too funny in a sad
kinda way.
The second is an entertaining, if ultimately lame, attempt at security
by obscurity. It is hard to imagine that 20 contractors to contractors
to the NSA didn't write an OCR algorithm on Spec the day these fonts
came out?
My favorite form of encryption/information theoretic elements is
Steganography <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography> which *hides*
a message within a message, adding a bit of misdirection to the
obfuscation. The last font described is a weak form of that and/or of
simple alphabetic substitution (N=26-M roughly).
I wouldn't be surprised if there was not an open-source solution based
on Haar Wavelets and OpenCV... It is really only a matter of "training"
in a case like this... and a fairly small symbol set.
I hope it is used as a protest-Font rather than seducing anyone into
thinking it would actually defeat anything but the most lame cryptographer.
- Steve
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