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Introducing the NSA-Proof Crypto-Font

Posted by Soulskill on from the for-days-when-reading-words-seems-too-easy dept.

Daniel_Stuckey writes "At a moment when governments and corporations alike are hellbent on snooping through your personal digital messages, it'd sure be nice if there was a font their dragnets couldn't decipher. So Sang Mun built one. Sang, a recent graduate from the Rhode Island Schoold of Design, has unleashed ZXX — a 'disruptive typeface' that he says is much more difficult to the NSA and friends to decrypt. He's made it free to download on his website, too. 'The project started with a genuine question: How can we conceal our fundamental thoughts from artificial intelligences and those who deploy them?' he writes. 'I decided to create a typeface that would be unreadable by text scanning software (whether used by a government agency or a lone hacker) — misdirecting information or sometimes not giving any at all. It can be applied to huge amounts of data, or to personal correspondence.' He named it after the Library of Congress's labeling code ZXX, which archivists employ when they find a book that contains 'no linguistic content.'"

7 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. Familiar with image recognition at all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Undecipherable my ass.

    1. Re:Familiar with image recognition at all? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I want to know why he thinks the NSA prints out each webpage and email and then runs it through OCR.

      ???

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    2. Re:Familiar with image recognition at all? by Yvanhoe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ok, now you are getting me angry.

      Geeks have been very vocal about wiretapping issues for a LONG time. Does ECHELON ring any bell? Geeks have created institutions like the EFF, tools like Tor, GPG, darknets, bittorrent, bitcoin. It is true that few people use them, and it is true as well that they allow a truly anonymous internet that escapes even NSA surveillance. I refuse that because you are too lazy to get an interest in these free tools you pretend that these problems are met with indifference in the tech community. Reality could not be further from the truth.

      People making most of these tools did this for free. When was the last time you did spend money in order to protect your privacy or anonymity? The market of surveillance is several dozens of billions of dollars yearly. The market of consumer counter-surveillance is almost inexistent. Yet, effective tools that are very easy to use exist. Don't forget to thank the geeks that have known for decades that the NSA was spying on you, found it immoral and spent years working gratis to provide you for free an excellent tool.

      Geeks employed at several levels at ISP do all that they can to keep internet free and neutral. The fact that regular internet is quite free (compared for instance with what you usuall get on your 3G smartphone) is due in large part because geeks in their majority have a strong ethical sense and know the value of openness. Snowden and Assange are geeks, but if you look at the HBGary leaks, you will see that developpers strongly opposed some policies. Whistleblowers about surveillance are almost always geeks involved in the infrastructure. Never legislators, managers, officiers, who know as well the extent of the surveillance.

      --
      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
    3. Re:Familiar with image recognition at all? by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Irrelevant. If the font were sent as a photograph of a printed copy all the NSA would have to do would be download his freely available font and add it to an OCR engine.

  2. I guess it will work... by cdrudge · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I guess it will work for all my digital content that I save as raster graphics. Which is...um...none of it.

  3. This is what you get... by carlhaagen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...when people with a fundamentally flawed understanding of computer communication try their hands at digital cryptography.

  4. Re:Missing the point... by putaro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And I will be writing all of my messages in crayon from now on because crayon will smudge up the scanner. It's only a point if it actually does something!