Hollywood Encrypted
We love encryption. It allows you to store any data anywhere without anyone getting to know anything. Until they have the password, that is, and then it all becomes clear in an instant.
The funny thing about encryption is that while it uses some very advanced technology - understanding it really is dream material for the nerdiest of nerds - it is normally very easy to use. So much so that most of the time we are not aware of encryption being used. Cable TV is encrypted. Access to your Internet bank account also. Amazon and most sites using either shopping cart technology or online payments are encrypted.
Who else uses encryption? Why, thieves and thugs and mobsters and crooks and foreign spies and terrorists, of course! Just take a peek at any half decent Hollywood movie or series these days. Case in point: The new thriller "Hostage" featuring Bruce Willis certainly fits the description (it is only half decent), and also features a bent accountant that stores encrypted files of shady transactions on a DVD masked as a movie. All well thus far. But why can the movie director never resist the urge to fill the computer screen with random numbers to illustrate encryption? For anyone in the know, it immediately breaks the illusion - the suspension of disbelief - and makes you aware that you are just watching another dime-a-dozen product from the Hollywood machine, made by another director who didn't bother to teach himself the first thing about a central premise to his movie.
The same thing is illustrated time and again when the crooks manage to encrypt files so miserably that the Jack Bauer team on "24" can access them in 7 minutes after barking something like "C'mon! Free the overlay server and plug in socket 13 on the ripple system. Do it now!". It's a cool show, but jeeeeez!
Here are a few sorry facts for Hollywood directors and other lost souls: 1) No encryption software fills your screen with random data (unless it features a specific Hollywood function, that is). 2) Any grandmother that can access the Internet should need only 10 minutes to learn to encrypt files in such a way that neither Jack Bauer's team, the CIA or a fourteen year old with glasses can break it open. Not in ten thousand years. Not in ten million years!
Encryption is for everybody. Your backup should be encrypted, so that it is of no use to others who get their hands on it. Your home computer should be encrypted, so that what is private is kept private - simple as that. Your wireless network should be encrypted, or it is likely to be abused by freeriders. Your laptop must be encrypted, so that information stored on it isn't stolen if the computer is. And last but not least: If you send sensitive data by email, you need to encrypt it. Here encryption is simply the "envelope" you put your letter into.
Hollywood has got it exactly backwards. Encryption is easy to use, but done correctly impossible to break. And it is used primarily by companies who are serious about their business, and by good citizens who value their privacy.
Do you?
The funny thing about encryption is that while it uses some very advanced technology - understanding it really is dream material for the nerdiest of nerds - it is normally very easy to use. So much so that most of the time we are not aware of encryption being used. Cable TV is encrypted. Access to your Internet bank account also. Amazon and most sites using either shopping cart technology or online payments are encrypted.
Who else uses encryption? Why, thieves and thugs and mobsters and crooks and foreign spies and terrorists, of course! Just take a peek at any half decent Hollywood movie or series these days. Case in point: The new thriller "Hostage" featuring Bruce Willis certainly fits the description (it is only half decent), and also features a bent accountant that stores encrypted files of shady transactions on a DVD masked as a movie. All well thus far. But why can the movie director never resist the urge to fill the computer screen with random numbers to illustrate encryption? For anyone in the know, it immediately breaks the illusion - the suspension of disbelief - and makes you aware that you are just watching another dime-a-dozen product from the Hollywood machine, made by another director who didn't bother to teach himself the first thing about a central premise to his movie.
The same thing is illustrated time and again when the crooks manage to encrypt files so miserably that the Jack Bauer team on "24" can access them in 7 minutes after barking something like "C'mon! Free the overlay server and plug in socket 13 on the ripple system. Do it now!". It's a cool show, but jeeeeez!
Here are a few sorry facts for Hollywood directors and other lost souls: 1) No encryption software fills your screen with random data (unless it features a specific Hollywood function, that is). 2) Any grandmother that can access the Internet should need only 10 minutes to learn to encrypt files in such a way that neither Jack Bauer's team, the CIA or a fourteen year old with glasses can break it open. Not in ten thousand years. Not in ten million years!
Encryption is for everybody. Your backup should be encrypted, so that it is of no use to others who get their hands on it. Your home computer should be encrypted, so that what is private is kept private - simple as that. Your wireless network should be encrypted, or it is likely to be abused by freeriders. Your laptop must be encrypted, so that information stored on it isn't stolen if the computer is. And last but not least: If you send sensitive data by email, you need to encrypt it. Here encryption is simply the "envelope" you put your letter into.
Hollywood has got it exactly backwards. Encryption is easy to use, but done correctly impossible to break. And it is used primarily by companies who are serious about their business, and by good citizens who value their privacy.
Do you?
posted by Frode Fanebust at 9:44 AM
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