How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Here's where secrecy hurts crypto. The Enigma cipher was flawed. Once [Alan] Turing looked hard at it, he figured out that the Nazi cryptographers had made a mathematical mistake. By getting his hands on an Enigma Machine, Turing could figure out how to crack any Nazi message, no matter what key it used.
That cost the Nazis the war. I mean, don't get me wrong. That's good news. Take it from a Castle Wolfenstein veteran. You wouldn't want the Nazis running the country.
After the war, cryptographers spent a lot of time thinking about this. The problem had been that Turing was smarter than the guy who thought up Enigma. Any time you had a cipher, you were vulnerable to someone smarter than you coming up with a way of breaking it.And the more they thought about it, the more they realized that anyone can come up with a security system that he can't figure out how to break. But no one can figure out what a smarter person might do.
(6.67-70)
Alan Turing was smarter than Nazis. The war Turing was fighting was more clear-cut than the War on Terror, where enemy and ally are hard to distinguish. Also, whenever you make a secret code you want to get lots and lots of people to test it. This is why so many programmers believe in open source programming. Even if they aren't fighting the Nazis.
Quote #5
Booger sighed a putupon sigh. "Look, Marcus, we're on your side here. We use this system to catch bad guys. To catch terrorists and drug dealers. Maybe you're a drug dealer yourself. Pretty good way to get around the city, a Fast Pass. Anonymous."
"What's wrong with anonymous? It was good enough for Thomas Jefferson. And by the way, am I under arrest?"
"Let's take him home," Zit said. "We can talk to his parents."
"I think that's a great idea," I said. "I'm sure my parents will be anxious to hear how their tax dollars are being spent "
I'd pushed it too far. (7.26-30)
Sometimes being clever with the police just gets you into more trouble. This seems to be one of Marcus's special talents. What other scenes can you find to illustrate this idea in the text? Or is this just a rare exception?
Quote #6
"Seriously. We can do this. We can mess up the profiles easily. Getting people pulled over is easy."
She sat up and pushed her hair off her face and looked at me. I felt a little flip in my stomach, thinking that she was really impressed with me.
"It's the arphid cloners," I said. "They're totally easy to make. Just flash the firmware on a tendollar Radio Shack reader/writer and you're done. What we do is go around and randomly swap the tags on people, overwriting their Fast Passes and FasTraks with other people's codes. That'll make everyone skew all weird and screwy, and make everyone look guilty. Then: total gridlock."
Van pursed her lips and lowered her shades and I realized she was so angry she couldn't speak. (8.34-37)
Marcus can figure out smart ways to use technology, but will he ever be clever enough to figure out the girls in his life? Stay tuned.