Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Decrypting the P&W Digest Etc.
Message-ID: <2015@looking.UUCP>
Date: 8 Sep 88 17:18:23 GMT
References: <13971@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 19

One should not ever allow automatic decryption of rotated articles.
That defeats the whole point!

The whole idea behind this scheme is that people must take a special,
explicit action to see the article.  Each and every article.  If the
action need only be taken once, you could claim "subscribing to alt.sex"
was the action, but you would not get very far.  If you don't have to take
it at all, it's the same as calling the data compression done during the
transmission "encryption."

Somebody once told me that their newsreader did an automatic decrypt on
any article with "rot13" in the title, and so would I please put that in
the title of encrypted rec.humor.funny postings.

My response was not what he wished.  I now delete rot13 if it's in the
title.  If somebody starts putting in automatic rot13 detectors, I will
have to switch away from rot13, no matter what the complaints.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473