Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Data that is Dangerous Well, dangerous in two senses. The usual danger, meaning something that could cause problems. Plus, an additional notion of danger in that it is easy to have happen. Some data has dangerous content. One can easily imagine dangerous data describing how to make a nuclear bomb, or disperse anthrax, or making a copy of a music CD. (Sorry, I digress.) Some data is in a form that allows it to be more easily implimented. One might be able to imagine a pamphlete Atomic Bombs for the Complete Idiot has an addtional component of danger which having to take a couple of years worth of physics and engineering classes does not. Machine readable data of encyption source code is considered dangerous enough to ban its export, but not if the data was simply printed in a book. Google Cache Like the blogger code mentioned yesterday, machine readable format's content may be understood fully, or may be simply seen as decoration. However, simply knowing that the decoration may constitute a weapon's grade muniton and make one an international arms dealer if sent to the wrong country, brings a whole other meaning to a piece. 10:38:16 PM