One-Time Pod

My podcast “Kaczynski Ciphers: The Unabomber’s Unused Encryptions” is about the serial killer Dr. Theodore Kaczynski. It covers what he did before starting a life of crime, the reason for his crimes, the consequences of his actions, and ultimately, what led him to be caught and his criminal career coming to an abrupt halt. The podcast also covers how the FBI initially reacted to the ciphers that they found and how they went about the situation. For a good portion of the podcast, I explain how the two codes Kaczynski created worked, and also provided an example of how someone could encode something using his methods.

References

Kifner, John. (1992, April 6). On the Suspect’s Trail: Life in Montana. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/05/us/suspect-s-trail-life-montana-gardening-bicycling-reading-exotically.html

Kintz, Theresa. (2014, December 16). Interview with Ted Kaczynski. Retrieved from https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/theresa-kintz-interview-with-ted-kaczynski.html

Klaus, Schmeh. (2014, March 8). Klaus Schmeh’s Unabomber Cipher Page. Retrieved from https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/klaus-schmehs-unabomber-cipher-page

Klaus, Schmeh. (2016, September 4). The Ciphers of the Unabomber. Retrieved from https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2016/09/04/the-ciphers-of-the-unabomber/?all=1

Knowles, William. (1997 December 26). Cryptographer Examines Kaczynski’s Journal.

Unabomber. (2016, May 18). Retrieved from www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/unabomber

Audio Sources

From https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music?nv=1

• Magic
• Voyage
• Reminisce
• Something New

Image: Unabomber shack, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

While many people rely on the internet for everything from casual emails to secure banking transactions, most don’t understand the security behind it. In this podcast, we will discuss a computer science problem that is the basis behind our most current methods of encryption. In turn, we will explore where the encryption is used, the math behind why it is so secure, and how further innovation could put it all in jeopardy.

References:
Baumhof, A. (2019, June 13). Andreas Baumhof. QuintessenceLabs.
https://www.quintessencelabs.com/blog/breaking-rsa-encryption-update-state-art

Hackerdashery. (2014, August 26). P vs. NP and the Computational Complexity Zoo
[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX40hbAHx3s&t=515s

Hardesty, L. (2009, October 29). Explained: P vs. NP. MIT News | Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. https://news.mit.edu/2009/explainer-pnp

Lake, J. (2021, March 18). What is RSA encryption and how does it work? Comparitech. https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/rsa-encryption/

Pavlus, J. (2020, April 2). What Does ‘P vs. NP’ Mean for the Rest of Us? MIT
Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2010/08/19/262224/what-does-p-vs-np-meanfor-the-rest-of-us

The Millennium Prize Problems | Clay Mathematics Institute. (2021, April 19). Clay
Mathematics Institute. https://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/millennium-prize-problems

Watson, J. (2017, March 16). Public key cryptography: What is it, how it works and how to use it in email and file encryption. Comparitech. https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/what-is-public-key-cryptography/

Audio From

Royalty Free Music by Bensound | Stock Music. (n.d.). BenSound. Retrieved March 31, 2021, from https://www.bensound.com/

For more information check out the following links to other resources about topics discussed in this podcast:
P vs NP and the Computational Complexity Zoo
Are you Ready for the Quantum Computing Revolution?

Image: Screenshot from “P vs. NP and the Computational Complexity Zoo.”

In today’s world, it’s not very hard to find information about anyone, no matter how personal. Our posts, public records, employment history, etc. can all be uncovered within a few clicks. A University of Washington team of researchers created a project called Vanish to address this, making it possible to permanently erase personal data. This project brings up the central debate of the “right to be forgotten” movement, discussing the legality and prospect of deleting data from public databases and web searches. This podcast discusses the system behind Vanish and the different sides of the “right to be forgotten” debate. Special thanks to Amelia Muir, Henoc Zinga, and Justin Terry for their contributions.

References
Auxier, B. (2020, August 17). Most Americans support right to have some personal info removed from online searches. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/27/most-americans-support-right-to-have-some-personal-info-removed-from-online-searches/

DeWeerdt, S. (2021, April 15). A Welcome Disappearing Act. Retrieved from
https://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/dec09/findings-forget.html

Geambasu, Roxana et. al. (2021, April 15). Enhancing the Privacy of the Web with
Self-Destructing Data. Retrieved from https://vanish.cs.washington.edu/

Heilweil, R. (2018, March 05). How Close Is An American Right-To-Be-Forgotten? Forbes. Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccaheilweil1/2018/03/04/how-close-is-an-american-right-to-be-forgotten/

Markoff, J. (2009, July 20). New Technology to Make Digital Data Self-Destruct. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/21crypto.html

Audio Sources:
https://orangefreesounds.com/swing-drum-beat-loop-with-piano-melody-132-bpm/
https://orangefreesounds.com/funk-guitar-intro/
https://orangefreesounds.com/electronic-background-music/
https://orangefreesounds.com/ocean-waves-crashing-on-beach/
https://orangefreesounds.com/mysterious-piano/
https://orangefreesounds.com/downtempo-chill-out-track/

Image: “Footprints in the sand,” Susanne Nilsson, Flickr CC BY-SA

This episode of One-Time Pod focuses on the 1990s “crypto wars,” a power struggle between the government and the American public. How much privacy does the general American public deserve in terms of encryption, and what are the limits of the government’s surveillance of the American public?

References:

Bankston, K., Kehl, D., Wilson, A. (2015). Doomed to Repeat history? Lessons from the Crypto Wars of the 1990s. New America. https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/3407-doomed-to-repeat-history-lessons-from-the-crypto-wars-of-the-1990s/Crypto%20Wars_ReDo.7cb491837ac541709797bdf868d37f52.pdf. Accessed March 30, 2021.

Freeh, L. J. (1998). Statement for the Record of Louis J. Freeh, Director Federal Bureau of Investigation Before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [Speech transcript]. The Avalon Project by Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/t_0011.asp. Accessed March 30, 2021.

Lewis, J. A. (2021). The Crypto Wars Are Over. Center for Strategic and International Studies. https://www.csis.org/analysis/crypto-wars-are-over. Accessed March 30, 2021.

Peterson, A. (2019). Today’s Internet users are still being hurt By ’90s-era U.S. encryption policies. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/05/28/todays-internet-users-are-still-being-hurt-by-90s-era-u-s-encryption-policies/. Accessed March 30, 2021.

Sound effects: Apple iMovie stock sound effects

Image: “MYK78 Clipper Chip,” Travis Goodspeed, Flickr CC BY