nanocompendium

When I was a young kid, everybody was worried about the Russians. The whole country was watching each other to see if neighbors had any “Communist characteristics”.

I thought that this was amusing. I had access to a Teletype-500 at school that was not connected to anything. However, by mucking around, I could make it print a random assemblage of characters.

I took a printout and made a “thermal” copy (we didn’t have Xerox then). I then made a copy of the copy.

Then I went to a store and bought a box of envelopes. I took one out of the center, was careful not to touch it, and threw the rest away.

I addressed the envelope to Radio Moscow, Moscow, USSR, using a new ball-point pen which I also threw away. Without touching anything, I inserted the “encrypted” message, added a stamp and mailed it from a mailbox in a city 30 miles from where I lived.

Within two weeks, the FBI visited me at school. Although I never admitted nor told anybody anything, they knew everything. They even knew how I got to the city 30 miles from where I lived.

Those were the days in which J. Edgar Hoover kept a file on practically every man, women, and child. These records were kept by humans. Now they use computers.

If you don’t want somebody to know what you are typing on your computer, turn off the power.