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This isn't really new with computers. People have been writing in code since time immemorial. What would have happened two hundred years ago if some defendant h

This isn't really new with computers. People have been writing in code since time immemorial. What would have happened two hundred years ago if some defendant had been using a book cipher and the police don't know which page of which book is the key? I'm guessing that they would have brute-forced it. The complexity is much lower than the modern case as is the number of potential keys. I can imagine someone spending a fair bit of time in jail for contempt during this procedure, but it would not be indefinite. I can also just see the police calling in a code breaker and not bothering with the court order to tell them the key.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> I'm guessing that they would have brute-forced it. In an era before digital computers? That still isn't any different. Nothing stops the police from hiring someone to break the encryption. They may not be able to do it but that is no different than before. Many ciphers that are broken today were not broken decades or centuries ago -- good luck brute forcing even 56-bit DES in 1975. It's completely plausible that AES will be considered insecure some years in the future even if nobody can break it today.
- goodcanadian 9y ago
  200 years ago they did not have computers to do the encryption either; encryption schemes were comparatively simple. Also, the scenario suggested that the police had the code book, but simply did not know which page. Code breaking predates computers by millennia.