Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Interview With Cryptographer Elonka Dunin

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the old-school-geeks dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Whitedust is running a very interesting article with the DEF CON speaker and cryptographer Elonka Dunin. The article covers her career and specifically her involvement with the CIA and other US Military agencies."

4 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Re:She is pretty amazing by Mortisoul · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You have to meet her honestly. In a society which is slowly making its general population utterly stupid, through the stripping of funding from schools and the terrible ways most teachers are treated, finding someone who is kind, fun to be around, and amazingly brilliant is just too rare. Go to defcon when she speaks and then talk to her afterward if you don't your missing out.

  2. Re:A Beautiful Mind? by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The movie's portrayal of Nash was cleaned up quite a bit -- in reality he was even crazier than Crowe portrayed him, and not at all a sympathetic character. The nice thing about people like Dunin is that they demonstrate to the world that people can be true geniuses without falling into any of the "mad scientist" or "hopeless social outcast" stereotypes.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  3. Elonka,should we be in constant fear of terrorism? by digitaldc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For emotional satisfaction, it has been helping out with the war on terrorism, and educating government agents about steganography and what types of codes that Al Qaeda might (or might not) be using.

    I would like to ask her if she feels that the amount of fear that people feel today about terrorism is justified? Is Elonka fearful of terrorist cells in our midst? Does she think that we are due for another attack?
    It would be interesting to know what she has to say about the 'War on Terrorism.'

    --
    He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
  4. Re:Elonka,should we be in constant fear of terrori by Elonka · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I can't speak for Elonka, but when I was helping (a little) with the codes book which is going to be published Real Soon Now, I got the extremely strong impression that, about Iraq at any rate, she was strongly in favour of robust, informed debate. She filled the book with quotes about the moral and pragmatic issues of war from multiple perspectives for precisely that reason.

    I couldn't have put it any better myself. You got it exactly right, and I'm glad that that came through, at least to you, one of my contributors who saw an early draft . Unfortunately, the publisher edited out some of my stronger comments from the book's introduction (I may re-post them via my blog, I haven't decided yet), but all of the plaintext (and encrypted!) quotes are still there, so the opinions that I wanted represented, still are. ;)

    Elonka :)

    (Answer to Cryptogram #52: "When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home." - Winston Churchill)