(CBS) Exclusive: Unabomber's Secret Code Cracked

[StrictlyRockers]

Dec 28, 2006 11:13 pm US/Pacific
Exclusive: Unabomber's Secret Code Cracked

Anna Werner
Reporting

(CBS 5) SAN FRANCISCO A decade after the feds tracked him down, CBS 5 Investigates has uncovered exclusive new information about Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, including a secret code he developed, and the confessions revealed as the code is broken.

When Federal Bureau of Investigation agents swooped down on Kaczynski's Montana cabin in 1996, they found much more than they expected, according to lead agent Max Noel.

There were "lots of writings, lots of journals, lots of notebooks," recalled Noel, now retired.

Among them, he said, was one notebook in particular that interested all of the agents at the scene because "it just contained lots of numbers," according to Noel.

Noel believes Kaczynski wrote in code out of concern that someone might break into his cabin and discover his current and past activities, which may have included plans for future attacks.

"I thoroughly believe that he was going to begin a much more prolific bombing attack," he said.

The FBI eventually found itself trying to unscramble a code that the National Security Agency would later describe as one of the more sophisticated codes it had ever seen, said Noel.

In fact, it was a code that could not be broken at all until, searching through Kaczynski's cabin, FBI agents found Kaczynski's own key to unmasking the hidden messages.

CBS 5 Investigates has obtained portions of that key along with the Unabomber's coded writings.

The coded writings initially appear to be sets of numbers, commas, and spaces placed in random order. But they are actually part of a very complex mathematical code, also called a cipher.

"It's very clear that this isn't a normal cipher," said Bruce Schneier, a nationally known expert on cryptography who was asked to review photos of the writings.

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Somewhat interesting article. If this guy was such a brainiac, why was he blowing peeps up?

I agree with a little of what his manifesto argued for, but the medium is the message, right? When you blows people up, that's all I can hear because that's so loud.

Oops, forgot to provide the link:
http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_363002905.html

SR

[HereSince1628]

1. Clearly you never have seen James Bond films...dastardly braniacs

a.k.a. MAD SCIENTISTS make great bad guys.

[melm00se]

2. simple

If this guy was such a brainiac, why was he blowing peeps up?

cuz he was a fricking looney

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. He was so smart, that he saw the take over of media by corpserations,

the take over of the political system by neoConmen and ultra-religious assholes, and the election of someone just like W. Seeing that in our future, he went insane and did all he could to stop it.

[havocmom]

15. BINGO!

He saw the corporate take over that was going on and did what he could as one man to try and stop it.

He vision was good, but his plan of being a one-man army against Capitalism Run Amok was pretty poor.

Will take most humans rising up to turn back the fascist take over now. We all just need to stay home several days running to remind the guys in the top floor suites that we know THEY depend on us and not the other way 'round. We need to stop buying their crap, figuratively and literally. We need to learn to grow some food and support locals who do same.

We need to learn the difference between what we really need and what we just want, then stop going for the latter, as it unduly enriches the already too rich.

Ted had the vision down well. His solution left much to be desired.

[NashVegas]

20. THE NEW LUDDITE CHALLENGE

Excerpt:



First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines.

But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones.

Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite - just as it is today, but with two differences.

Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity.

If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite.

Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem."

Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.


=======

No, he wasn't a fan of liberals, or at least, of "soft-hearted" liberals.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

21. to a point that makes some sense, but

remember that no person, not even a barely sentient, inane, small-minded psychopath like George W., is an island. Add to that that those who have tasted the bloatway waters have a glimpse of what true wealth and power entails. They do live different lives than 99.999% of the rest of the world. But remember, they could have the very same wealth, advantages and incredible ease of life - but if they were alone, they would be miserable. They have this need to know that they have 1000 or 10000 or even 10,000,000 times as much as everyone else, and they need to be able to compare. otherwise, they would be empty. No, they need the masses only if it tells them how important they are.

[Kelvin Mace]

4. Another example of

how law enforcement is never as clever as it pretends and that the only reasons criminals are ever caught is:

1) Most criminals are morons, but a few are intelligent. The police are slightly smarter than these criminals, but not much. Truly intelligent criminals don't get caught except for reason #2.

2) Someone rats them out.

[qazplm]

7. usually

they rat themselves out.

The VAST majority of my clients confess before I ever hear of them.

[Kelvin Mace]

13. Well, you can view that

as an attack of conscience, or stupidity.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. I'm curious how the right explains Kaczynski

when they are telling us that so far all terrorists are muslims? And McVeigh? And Rudolph?

[ixion]

6. well, strictly speaking, it wasn't "cracked"... they just found the key

just sayin'...

[silverweb]

8. He was wrong to harm anyone.

I attribute that to his mental illness. That he is brilliant, even a genius in some respects, is pretty evident. Much of what he said in his "manifesto" was true and made a good deal of sense, though much was also way off track -- and of course, his methods to effect the changes he felt necessary were completely wrong.

He received a life sentence. I wonder if he's still writing and how his thoughts about the state of the world may have changed....

[kestrel91316]

9. He was blowing people up because he had severe paranoid

delusions because of his mental illness.

He just also happened to be scientifically and mechanically gifted. Lethal combination.

[Tin Man]

10. There's a fine line between genius and insanity...

and some folks straddle it.

[ckramer]

11. And what is the use of that being cracked?

Don't you think this is too late?

[tblue37]

12. I read back then that he admitted (in a journal entry, I think)

that he was just using the environmentalist argument as a cover for the fact that he liked killing people and wanted to do it.

[SpiralHawk]

14. He was probably a closet republicon

The republicons have this deviancy, false-flag thing going on.

You know, just consider the republicon heroi:

A Connecticut preppy cheerleader AWOL-in-chief who pretends he is a tough-guy texan war hero.

[Morgana LaFey]

16. Intelligence doesn't protect one from mental illness

In fact, extreme intelligence (brilliance) too often goes hand in hand with mental illness.

[daleo]

17. Lots of braniacs blow people up

Although they usually work for the government (e.g. Manhattan Project).

[GoddessOfGuinness]

18. It's creepy to think that there's probably another wacko just like him...

...only more careful.

[maxsolomon]

19. doesn't make any sense - why is this news?

they found his code book & his code key in the SAME 1 ROOM CABIN, at the SAME TIME.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

22. it tells you something about how smart most FBI agents are.

and how easily confused they can by in the face of someone creative.